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t^ere is care tlrjat will r^ot leave us, J 
And pair| that will r^ot flee ; 9 
But ori our t|eartK\inqltered, 
1 Sits love 'tweer^ You and Me ." 









•Jnteied, lucoriling to act of Congress, in the year eighteen hundred and seventy nine. 

By MRS. C. E. PERRY, 

In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



CONTENTS. 



Page. 
Auction Sale - - - - - - -13 

A Joyful Thanksgiving - - - - • - 46 

A Tour Among Ijlousekecpers - - - - 35 

A Day at Luzerne ------ 78 

Amusement for the Boys - - - - - 82 

About Babies -------93 

A True Story of A Haunted House - - - 99 
A Tale of The Tropics - - - - - 115 

An Ungallant Ghost - - - - - - 129 

Christmas is Coming _ _ _ - _ 3 

Common People -------8 

Children, Sunshine, Shadows - - - - 41 

Crape on the Door - - - - - - 44 

Can the Old Love ?__---- 67 

Compensation _______ 76 

Cannot Afford It ------ 102 

Empty Cradles -------5 

Fatherless - - - - - - - 21 

Farewell ____---- 88 

Foreign Missions ------ 107 

From Under My Awning _ _ _ - - 125 
Good-bye to the Old Year - - - - 134 

Human Fish - - - - - - -114 

Independence Day and the Little Ones - - 54 



Contents. 



I Have no Friends to Speak of 
Jottings on a Hot Afternoon - 
Legally Divorced 
Love and Sorrow _ _ _ 
Live to Exist - - - 
Life's Contrasts - - - 

Motherless - - - - 

Making Shavings _ _ _ 
Mother's Hour - - - 
Mr. Mushroom - - - 

Midsummer Musings - 
Midniglit - - - - 

Mother-in-Law (The Other Side) 
Nothing But Rags - - - 
Other People's Boys 
Our Homes - - - - 

Our Dead Darling 

Summer Friend - - - 

Ticking of the Watch - 

The Newsboy - - - - 

The Practical Woman - 

The Little Hearse - - - 

The Little Outcast 

Tact ------ 

Women's Work - _ - 
Winter in the Suburbs 
Waiting - - - - 

What Fame Means to A Woman 



Page. 

- 58 

75 

- 10 
69 

- 1 10 
123 

- 19 
26 

- 32 
39 

- 65 
105 

- 1 12 

28 

- 46 

84 

- S6 

5^ 

- 40 
56 

- 60 
62 

- 90 
97 

- 15 
23 

- 64 

73 



"Christmas is Coming." 



COMING to the homes of wealth and luxury in town 
and in country, and bright eyes grow brighter and 
cheeks flush with a deeper glow, and pluin[) arms arc 
rosy clasped around the necks of grown-uj) sisters and 
aunties, while wonderful secrets are confided to their 
keeping. Papas come home laden with parcels that 
quickly disappear into the depths of some dark closet ; 
mammas are out on important errands, never heeding the 
chill air nor the fast-falling flakes which give warning 
that a snow storm is setting in. Cooks are deep in the 
mysteries of jellies, boned - turkey, cakes and ices. 
Beautiful Christmas trees, glittering with rare and 
costly gifts, are closely guarded in closed rooms. Dear 
old Santa Claus, the best and dearest saint in all the 
calendar to the hearts of the children, is coming this 
very night after long weeks of glad anticipation. 



4 "Christmas is Coming." 

" Christmas is coming " to the homes in the next 
street, but it brings no gifts, not even warmth and 
food. Father is out seeking work ; mother is hur- 
rying with numbed fingers to finish a piece of sewing 
by which to gain a pittance to buy bread for supper. 
Pale, pinched children are huddled before a scant fire, 
vainly trying to warm their chilled limbs, and wishing 
that the cruel winter were over. 

The early twilight deepens, and out in the gaslit 
streets arc little blue-faced, half-clad urchins, and girls 
with ragged shawls drawn tightly over their heads, gaz- 
ing longingly through plate glass windows upon toys 
so rare and beautiful they must surely have been im- 
ported from fairy land, wondering, perhaps, as older 
minds sometimes wonder, why they must have no share 
in all this happiness — why Santa Claus remembers 
only the rich people, passing by so many homes where 
little children live and try to be good, where many a 
little sad-eyed girl keeps house and tends the baby all 
day long with womanly patience and care, while mother 
is out doing a day's washing ; and the little brother 
comes in at night cold, tired and hungr}% w^ith the few 
pence earned by selling papers or small wares at the 
street corners. 

Fathers and mothers, and you who have never been 
called by those sacred names — One who loved little 
children said : 



Emtty Cradles. 5 

" Take heed that yc despise not one of these little 
ones, for I say unto you that in heaven their angels do 
always behold the face of my Father." 

Are there not many who pass these forlorn little 
ones, with the blight of poverty on their lives, who 
out of their abundance could cause some of their little 
hearts to thrill with an unusual happiness? And are 
there not some of us who will sij; by our firesides on 
Christmas Eve with a pain in our hearts that is more 
keen on these yearly anniversaries, thinking of a loved 
and beautiful child, whose absence leaves one gift less 
on our tree ? And shall we not in remembrance of 
these dear ones, removed forever from our care, make 
for some other little heart a " Merry Christmas ? " 



Empty Cradles. 



STANDING in the nursery is the heavy, old-fash- 
ioned mahogany cradle, belonging to a generation 
that has been. As unlike the dainty little swinging ori- 
ole nests that are found in the nurseries of to-day as the 
frail, delicate, helpless little mothers are unlike the staid, 
pains-taking, sedate matrons of an age that has glided 
into the past. How many a dim, dusty old garret 
has stored away among its rubbish one of these 
cradles, with heavy, projecting top, which has 



6 Empty Cradles. 

shaded many a little face from the summer sunbeams, 
peering throuLjh the great lilac and syringa bushes, 
that sent their fragrance through the open casement, or 
shielded it from the draughts when the bare old elm 
trees " wrung their many hands in the bleak wintry 
air ; " faces that have grown wrinkled and careworn — 
faces that have grown seared and hardened — faces that 
are hidden away under waving grass, and myrtle, and 
daisies, leaving only a memory as faint and sweet as 
the odor of the blossoms blown through the window 
by the summer wind. 

Not long ago beside these cradles sat the patient 
mother, in neat gingham or calico dress, black silk 
apron, plain collar, and hair drawn simply back and fast- 
ened by a serviceable comb, nimble fingers deftly plying 
the knitting needles, or basket of darning by her side, 
one foot on the rocker, singing a gentle lullaby, or per- 
haps teaching a little five-year-old daughter to piece 
neatly together the patchwork blocks for a new quilt. 
To-day mamma sits by the parlor window in rich silk, 
and laces, and jewels, trifling with some bit of netting, 
or crocheting, or embroidery. Bridget is in the nur- 
sery giving baby the bottle, in which she has surrepti- 
tiously admixed a little soothing syrup to insure a 
quiet sleep, that she may spend the evening in the 
kitchen with her " second cousin," while papa and 
mamma are at some fashionable assembly. 



Empty Cradles. 7 

How many a tender memory clings to the old cradle 
that has awakened these remniiscences — a cradle that 
has rocked two generations, r'irst, how it was brought 
fresh and smart, in its new coat of varnish, into the 
pretty cottage home, where brook and birds, and rust- 
ling trees all united in a song of welcome to its little 
occupant; how the dainty [billows and blankets were 
carefully arranged and the hrst l)aby in that home was 
laid in the soft nest ; how as years passed other babies 
came and claimed their share of rocking ; how little 
fevered heads rolled restlessly on its pillows, and little 
limbs grew cold and stiff, and dying eyes gazed up 
from the dear cradle-bed where they were wont to find 
so much of cosy rest and comfort ; how others grew into 
manhood, two to fall on the battle-field and others to 
struggle on the great battle-field of life ; and at last, 
how the ol'd cradle came to be voted a useless piece of 
furniture, only fit for the garret, where it stood several 
years consigned to dust, cobwebs and solitude, until 
one bright winter morning it was again brought forth 
into the light of day, dusted, rubbed and fitted up with 
dainty bedding, and received into its capacious old 
arms the first baby of another generation, whose 
mother it had rocked years ago. And here it stands 
in the nursery to-day, with one sturdy boy seated on 
the top and two inside, with little thought in their mis- 
chievous heads of the memories it has called up, or the 
associations which cluster around the old cradle. 



Common People. 



Common People. 



A MAN is a fool who can't get rich," said a millionaire 
the other day as he leaned back in the luxurious 
cushions of his easy chair and watched the smoke curl- 
ing up from his fragrant Havana. How numerous the 
fools must be in this world I pondered, the hard-palmed, 
toil-worn, wrinkled, weary, hopeless-looking men that 
we meet in our daily walks. Are they all fools? 
Or, have they been less ready to take advantage of 
their fellow-men ; to cheat the widow, to grind the 
fatherless, to make capital out of the misfortunes of 
others, and thus seen their less scrupulous and there- 
fore more successful rivals reap a golden harvest, while 
only the gleaning of the field has fallen to them. 

" It is so unpleasant to come in contact with com- 
mon people," said one of fortune's favorites. " Com- 
mon people ! " Who are they ? The seamstress, who 
toils wearily through the long hours of the night, stop- 
ping often to soothe a sick and restless child, that 
Madame's dress may be ready in time for to-morrow's 
reception? The tired girl, who stands behind the coun- 
ter all the bright spring day waiting upon fair and fas- 
tidious ladies, and who goes to her humble home at 
night with aching head and discouraged heart, contrast- 



Common People, 9 

ing the hardness of her lot with the ease of theirs ? 
The sad-eyed woman, who sits beside you in the street 
car, with a bundle of calico shirts on her lap, for the 
making of which her employer pays her the munificent 
sum of fifteen cents each ? 

Draw your robes more closely around you, my lady, 
and cover your skye-terrier with your lace mouchoir 
lest the air may be contaminating, for these are the 
" common people." Go to your elegant home and give 
your dress to Nannine, to remove the traces of the 
dust from the bare feet of a dirty urchin, as he was 
thrust from the car with the little basket of wood vio- 
lets for which he vainly besought custom. Sprinkle a 
few drops of eau de cologne over Sandy, to remove the 
vile odors that linger in his shaggy coat, and never, 
never again do so absurd a thing as to take a street car 
and subject yourself to such annoyances. 

Yes, these are the " common people." We meet 
them in the highways and in the by-ways, and there 
are poor people, and unfashionable people, and unfor- 
tunate people, and people we can't shake off; and if 
we do, they sometimes rise up before us with sad, re- 
proachful eyes, that make us uncomfortable, which is 
very, very annoying. But by-and-by we leave all 
these pleasant things, stately mansions, elegant cloth- 
ing, carriages, servants, bonds and mortgages, deeds 
and stocks, real estate, gold and silver. We are on a 



lo Legally Divorced. 

level with the "common people." Strange but true ! 
Down in the common earth ! A more costly stone is 
laid over us, perhaps, but that doesn't much matter, 
and I am afraid that in that country where gold isn't 
used as weight in the balance there will be found a 
great many very poor rich men — men who won't have 
much capital to start on — and a vast number of " com- 
mon people" who once went clothed in garments of 
purple. For " the rank is but the guinea's stamp, the 
man's the efowd for a' that." 



Legally Divorced, 



" Absolute Divorces Legally Obtained from the Courts of Different 
States. No Publicity. Advice free," etc. 

WHAT would our grandparents have thought of the 
above, I wonder ? The nuptial tie was not so 
easily severed in their day, they took each other " for 
better or for worse, for rich or for poor, in sickness and 
in health," to love, cherish and comfort, and was their 
generation less happy than ours? 

I think not, judging from the serene and patient- 
looking old couples that I occasionally meet in 
street, or cars, with faces marked with the lines of 
many cares, trials, afflictions and disappointments, yet 
the calm eyes tell of a steadfast love for each other. 



Legally Divorced. i i 

faith in each other and in the mercy that has spared 
them to descend the hill which they have climbed hand 
in hand together. And when I consider the reckless 
haste and jostle of the age in which we live, of the 
fast young men looking for rich wives, and the frivo- 
lous, useless young women, whose only aim in life is 
to follow where fashion leads, and to be the center of 
attraction to a bevy of brainless fops, finally selecting 
one for a husband, whose chief recommendation con- 
sists in his graceful form, the elegant twirl of his mous- 
tache and his nonchalant and easy way of paying 
doubtful compliments. I cannot wonder at the adver- 
tisement which so often meets my eye in the daily 
papers. Oh ! wretched, wretched homes all over the 
land, more especially in the larger cities, those hot-beds 
of vice and misery — homes where husbands and wives 
pass their lives in wrangling and bitterness, where little 
children are left to the care of immoral and ignorant 
servants, while the father spends his days in mad spec- 
ulation and his nights at the gaming- table, and the 
mother in shopping and flirting with her male acquaint- 
ances. 

There comes to me sometimes a glimpse of a home 
in striking contrast to these, which deserve not the 
sacred name — a home just one step this side of Par- 
adise, where the marriage bond was " wrought in 
heaven." It is a little removed, this ideal home of 



12 Legally Divorced. 

mine, from the bustling town, where the sHght isola- 
tion of country life leads to an individuality and 
thoughtfulness of character. The house is thoroughly 
comfortable and convenient, filled with the evi- 
dences of taste, refinement and culture ; there are 
grand old trees about it, where the birds build their 
nests in summer, and waving grass, and beautiful 
pictures framed in every door and window ; there's a 
harmony, a fitness and purpose in all things whether 
for use or adornment. As year after year passes, child- 
ren are welcomed as a gift from heaven, and grow 
beautiful, happy and intelligent in the loving, peaceful 
atmosphere of home. Guests are entertained with 
true and refined courtesy and hospitality, and depend- 
ents are made to feel that their comfort and welfare 
are considered. Should some slight difference of opinion 
occur between husband and wife it does not broaden 
into a wide gulf over which are hurled the bitter words 
" improperly mated," "want of affinity," "better sepa 
rate," instead, after a little kind discussion, a little 
yielding on either side, the difficulty is amicably ar- 
ranged. And as the years pass and a calm and beau- 
tiful old age comes creeping on, their children and their 
children's children rise up and call them blessed. 

Friends, pause a moment in your eager haste, before 
availing yourselves of the "advice free," etc., in the 
advertisement above, and think that by-and-by, a few 



Auction Sale. 13 

years, perhaps weeks or days, the good Father will 
grant you a divorce " absolute and legal." 



Auction Sale. 



"The entire furniture of the elegant residence No. 518 street 

will be sold at auction, on Wednesday, April loth. 

1"^HE red flag floating from the window announces 
that the day long dreaded by the occupants has 
arrived, and the grand mansion, whose doors never 
before swung open except to admit the aristocratic 
world, is thronged by a motley company, swaying from 
drawing-room to library, from bed-chamber to dining- 
room, from conservatory to basement. The tone of the 
grand piano has been tried by fingers unaccustomed to 
draw melody from the keys of pearl ; paintings and 
statuary have been discussed in a manner amusing to 
the half dozen connoisseurs scattered among the 
throng; mattresses and pillows have been poked into, 
brocatelle and lace curtains have been critically exam- 
ined, silver and china inspected, the handsome Axmins- 
ter and velvet carpets pronounced moth eaten. But 
now the voice of the auctioneer is heard above the din 
and noise of the jostling crowd, where second-hand 
dealers, boarding-housekeepers, and a few of the elite 
of society, elbow each other unceremoniously. One 



14 Auction Sale. 

after another the elegant works of art, suits of magnifi- 
cent furniture, rich silver and porcelain are bid off. 
Drawing-room, dining-room, library and basement all 
are finished, and now to the nursery hasten those eager 
for a bargain. Here arc the two little beds, with their 
dainty coverings and drapery, and here the rose-wood 
crib from which baby raised his little curly head this 
morning with a wondering " coo " at mamma's swollen, 
tear-stained face, and the sobs of little Will and Jessie. 
The crowd is gone at last, and quiet once more reigns 
throughout the stately mansion. From one of the 
upper rooms descends the once happy mistress of tliis 
elegant home, her baby clinging to her neck, her little 
son and daughter to her hand. To-morrow rude hands 
will carry away her household gods. Two short 
months ago she was a happy, idolized wife, rich, 
courted, honored ; to-day she is a widow, poor, neg- 
lected, forgotten. Friends had sympathized — a few 
days after her bereavement. What more could reason- 
ably be expected ? people in affliction are such doleful 
company; and then runior whispered they had been 
living beyond their means, and when all was settled 
there would be no ireans left. In short, it became 
very evident that the petted and fascinating Mrs. 
Courtenay would have to be dropped from the " set " 
she had been accustomed to entertain in her elegant 
and hospitable home. IleaxxMi help you, poor widow ! 



Women's Work. 15 

and may your future home be far away from the heart- 
less, fickle, and selfish " set " who call themselves 
" society " — away from the strugglini^, stifiing life of 
the pent-up city, to the sweet peace of some quiet 
home, where the gentle, loving voice of Nature shall 
soothe and heal your sorrows ; where your fatherless 
little children shall cease to long for the glittering toys 
and pleasures that only wealth can obtain, in the joy- 
ous freedom of the woods and meadows, where birds 
and trees, flowers and streams, and all sweet and lovely 
sights and sounds shall influence them to better, purer, 
and nobler lives than those reared in luxury often 
attain. 



Women's Work. 



THERE is a great deal said of the inadequacy of the 
prices paid for the work done by women, and of 
the few avenues open to those compelled to earn for 
themselves a livelihood. Now it seems to me this is in 
a great measure the fault of woman herself, or of those 
having charge of young girls. Scarce one woman 
in one hundred, in any class of society, is thoroughly 
educated. The usual school routine is gone through, 
a superficial knowledge of the English branches ac- 
quired, a smattering of one or two foreign languages, 
a little music and drawing, forgotten after a year or 



1 6 Women's Work. 

two of married life. Then, after the education is pro 
nounced " finished," comes the debut m society, and in 
a few months perhaps, or years, the end and aim of 
life is attained — a fashionable wedding is announced. 
The bride thinking far more of her handsome trous- 
seau and her elegant bridal gifts than of the duties and 
responsibilities she is about to assume. After the 
bridal tour commences housekeeping — in most cases 
carried on by the servants. Should the husband pros- 
per in business, life may glide along smoothly in shal- 
low waters. But fortune is such a fickle goddess. Some 
day, perchance, the sky may be suddenly overcast, 
black clouds of misfortune may swoop down like great 
birds of prey descending upon their hapless victims. 
The husband and father may be cut down by the swift 
scythe of the Great Reaper in the prime of his life, in 
the midst of his labors. Fortune gone, friends take a 
hurried leave, and a helpless woman, with little children 
clinging to her, wrings her hands in tearless agony, and 
the cry goes forth, "Oh, Heaven! what can I do?" 
Memory brings back the careless, thoughtless days of 
girlhood, and " Oh ! " thinks the despairing soul, 
" could I but have looked forward to this day, I would 
have been prepared for it — fitted myself for some 
avocation in life by which I could maintain myself and 
my children." She makes a mental list of her acquire- 
ments. Teaching? — her education has been too super- 



Women's Work. 17 

ficial for that. Music?— ditto. Drawing?— ditto. Sew- 
ing ? A good dressmaker earns three dollars a day. 
Yes, but she understands her business thoroughl)% and 
there has been nothing thorough in this woman's life. 
An indulged daughter, a petted wife — she is without 
resources. A boarding-house ? Yes, that is the only 
resort of the decayed gentlewoman. She owns her 
furniture, and nothing else in the world ; so the hand- 
some house is given up and a cheaper one rented, and 
the delicate lady opens a boarding-house, to succeed, 
perhaps, if health of body and strength of will shall be 
equal to the task ; if not, to succumb and die, leaving 
her orphan children to the tender mercies of a selfish 
world. 

Now I believe that any bright, energetic girl is just 
as capable of learning some particular thing well, as 
much as I believe that any bright, energetic boy is 
capable of it. Only impress upon her mind the ne- 
cessity for it. Teach her to consider it a disgrace to 
grow up without acquiring some useful occupation or 
trade, as much as you would teach it to your son. Let 
it be music, painting, sculpture, book-keeping, dress- 
making, millinery — anything, so that she acquire the 
art thoroughly. 

There is in the city of New York an institution (the 
Cooper Institute) founded by a noble man, whom 
women shall rise up and call blessed, where any 
2 



1 8 Women's Work. 

woman may receive, free, an education which shall 
fit her to take a place in the world as a laborer worthy 
of her hire. No healthy woman need be a drone in 
the great hive in which she lives. 

Whence come so many wretched, ill-assorted mar- 
riages? For the reason that half the women marry for 
homes, and they get houses to shelter them, not homes 
in the true sense of the word. Home is a place where 
the heart is at rest, and were girls differently educated 
they would wait for that real home, where " joy is 
duty and love is law," rather than accept the first man 
who offers them a good house, and lead henceforth and 
forever after a life of bitter repining for what might 
have been, and growing old before their time with the 
friction which must exist between two natures entirely 
dissimilar. 

There are women — poor, tired souls, wretched from 
their very infancy — so surrounded and hemmed in by 
adverse circumstances that education is among the 
impossibilities — who must still sit with worn fingers 
and hollow eyes, singing the " Song of the Shirt." To 
such may heaven be more merciful than man has been, 
and give them in the hereafter sweet and glorious 
recompense for lives of toil, and want, and sorrow. 



Motherless. 19 



Motherless. 



THREE little golden heads at an upper window and 
a long line of carriages in the street below. Nurse 
holds baby up, who laughs and claps his little dimpled 
hands as his eye is caught by the nodding plumes on 
the hearse ; and presently the procession moves down 
the street, and mother has gone away from her darlings 
forever. 

The men from the undertaker's remove the traces of 
the funeral ; the parlors are in their wonted order, ex- 
cept perhaps the curtains are not looped as gracefully, 
the furniture is not disposed as tastefully, and the little 
ornaments and bijouterie are not in their accustomed 
places. In mother's room there is a chill and a prim 
air about every thing, so different from its usual look 
of cosy comfort. A bright June sunlight is gleaming 
through the half-opened blinds, but it does not seem 
to give warmth or cheer. The toys are brought out, 
.but the children soon tire of them. There's something 
gone — they scarce realize what. By-and-by baby be- 
gins to fret, and nurse gets cross and puts him in the 
crib to "cry it out." Poor little darling! mamma's 
pet ! how tenderly she would have soothed him with 
soft lullabys. And then papa comes home and gathers 



20 Motherless. 

the little flock around his knee, and tries to tell them 
somcthiny,- of the beautiful home to which mamma has 
gone ; but they want her sadly here ; they cannot think 
why the Good Father should want her so much more. 

By-and-by the days glide into months, and there is 
always something wanting in their lives. Their physi- 
cal needs are cared for, but father is full of business 
cares. The tender mother-love is gone, and there are 
none to sympathize in the little joys and sorrows. The 
proud day comes when baby takes the first step alone, 
but there's no mother's voice to encourage him, no 
mother waiting with open arms to catch and half 
smother him with kisses. Little five-year old Alice 
comes home from her first day at school, brimful of 
her new experience, and the number of letters she has 
learned ; but nobociy cares to listen to her. Charley 
comes tearing into the nursery with a rent in his jacket 
and a black eye, and a story of a big boy who struck 
him and took his ball away, and the boyish heart swells 
almost to bursting, but mamma isn't there to bathe the 
eye, and mend the jacket, and to promise another 
ball larger and better than the old one, and the little 
fellow goes softly into her room and lays his head down 
on her pillow, and cries himself to sleep. 

Then after a year or two, perhaps, there's a confu- 
sion of painters and paperers, and upholsterers in the 
house, and the room where the dear one died is newly 



Fatherless. 2 1 

furnished, and the old things are sent to the auction 
store, and it is whispered a new mother is coming; and 
the children listen and wonder, and presently papa 
goes away for a few days and comes home in a carriage 
with a lady beside him, and tells them he has brought 
them a new mamma, whom he hopes they will love 
and obey ; but they think they cannot love her at all. 
Their own mamma had a sweet voice, and loving eyes 
the color of the forget-me-nots in the garden, and this 
one has great bold eyes, and a cold, haughty face, and 
she does not kiss them as though she meant it. Papa 
seems to care more for her than for them, and they go 
away to the nursery with a dim, vague sense of a loss 
that can never be made up to them, (jod pity the 
motherless. 



Fatherless. 



No more watching for the car that brings papa home. 
No merry shout that announces his arrival, and 
rush to the gate, and tossing of bundles and papers to 
the older ones, and tossing in the air and caresses for 

the little ones. 

No scampering into the sitting-room, and cutting of 
strings, and opening of parcels, to see what papa has 



2 2 Fatherless. 

brought to brighten the evening for the loved ones at 
home. 

No patient explanation after tea of that last hateful 
sum in algebra, over which poor Ned has been worry- 
ing half the afternoon, and which the teacher insists 
)iiust be done at home to save himself time and trouble. 

No wcMidcrful fairy tale that holds the children 
breathless while mamma rocks baby to sle^p. No 
romping, rollicking game, down through parlor, hall 
and dining-room, that drives dull care away, sets cook 
wondering if there ever was " another sech a man for 
his childer," and sends them all to bed with hearts as 
light as childhood's heart should ever be. 

No father's eye to glow with pride and pleasure at 
the c^uiet growth of manliness in the dear elder son. 
No father's indulgent smile for the harmless pranks of 
his mirthful, irrepressible brother. No strong arms to 
enfold the little sunny head that bears no memory of 
a father's face. No firm hand, warm heart and strong 
will to carve for them a place in the world. Instead, a 
shadowed face and a wistful look in the eyes when 
other children run to meet " papa," tmd a recollection 
growing fainter year by year, of one who did for them 
what their playmates tell them " papa " is going to do. 
— when the holidays come with their Christmas trees, 
gifts, and sleigh rides — when " Fourth of July " sends 
papas home laden with huge packages from which the 



Winter in the Suburbs. 23 

protruding sky rockets proclaim to the gleeful young- 
sters the secret of their contents — the birth-day, 
always joyfully celebrated. 

Instead, cold and careless words, from those who 
were once all smiles, suavity and deference. Shaking 
of wise heads and gloomy prophecies, for the future of 
boys brought up by a too indulgent mother. Each 
somersault and bubbling over of mischief and mirth, 
quoted as an evidence of total depravity in the quick- 
tempered, warm-hearted, affectionate little lad who 
would not willfully harm a fly. 

And so the years pass on. The lads struggle up 
into men, to succeed or fail, as the case may be, and 
none pause to think " what might have been " had they 
not been written " Fatherless." 



^A/'inter in the Suburbs. 

OLD winter, after long dallying and coquetting with 
Autumn, is finally wielding his sceptre with the air 
of a despot. Our friends in the city, looking out this 
morning upon their blockaded streets and across into the 
bed-chambers and breakfast-rooms of their neighbors, are 
possibly wasting a good deal of commiseration upon the 
condition of the inhabitants of the suburbs. Wonder 
how Brown likes the country this weather, remarks 



24 Winter in the Suburbs. 

Pater faniilias Jones as he complacently sips his Mocha 
and glances over the columns of the Times. Spare 
your pity, good friends, we are not suffering with cold, 
nor arc we snow-bound ; furnace and grate make a 
genial atmosphere within doors, while without the 
plough is at work along the track of the horse railroad, 
the steed of iron hourly snorts defiance at obstacles in 
his path, and the merry jingle of bells all tell that nei- 
ther business nor pleasure are suspended. 

Ah. but these grand old hills across the ice-bound 
lluilson! How beautiful they are in the early morn- 
ing! (ilorious in all times and seasons! Like most 
things common to our daily life, I think they are not 
half ai>preciated by those familiar with them, but let 
us go awa)- and sojourn for a time in a level region, how 
the\' stiikc us on our return. We iiuniluntarily reach 
out our arms to embrace them ; our hearts send up a 
s(,)ng of praise at beholding them once again, I doubt 
il half )'ou dwellers in cities know any thing of the 
beauties of nature in winter; )'ou all rush to the coun- 
tr)' when the iK>g star rules, but in the winter, ugh ! 
N'ou shrug )-our shoulders and shiver at the very 
thought. 

Lvtiok fi-om this window, or better still, stand here in 
the center o{ the hall and look from all the windows, 
north, south, east and west. Isn't this pure expanse o'i 
white, unsullied snow somethino- beautiful to raze 



Winter in the Suburbs. 25 

upon ? See the evergreens thickly sprinkled with the 
soft jlakes, and "The poorest twig on the elm tree is 
ridged inch-deep with pearl." Now glant:e farther to 
the northward and sec the lights from the iron works 
gleaming through the misty air. Were it but a scene 
in some foreign land, how eloquently we should expa- 
tiate upon its beauties. 

To the true lover of nature there is as much love- 
liness in the country in winter as in the budding 
spring, the blossoming summer, or the gold and russet- 
tinted autumn. The strength and majesty of the oaks, 
the graceful outlines of the elms and maples stripped 
of their verdure, is more clearly defined against the 
background of the clear winter sky, than in the luxu- 
riance of their summer garb. The sunset hues are as 
shifting and gorgeous. The pines loom up more 
grandly through the nudeness of their neighbors. The 
spruce and the hemlock are like the faces of friends who 
do not strike their colors when the chill winds of adver- 
sity )^histle around us. Then what greater happiness 
to a home-loving nature, than that " tumultuous pri- 
vacy of storm," of which Emerson has given us so 
enticing a picture ? 

What more delightful than a harmonious family 
seated around a cosy fireside, the curtains drawn, the 
fire glowing brightly, the table well filled with books, 
papers and periodicals, a faint perfume from the flowers 



26 Making Shavings. 

in the window floating in the air? Reading, games, 
the topics of the day discussed. The " mither wi,' her 
needle and her shears," making the " auld claes look 
amaist as weel's the new ; ' or softly sing a lullaby to 
little golden hair, who is striving to keep the blue eyes 
open just a little longer, to see when Jack Frost comes 
to make the wonderful pictures on the panes that so 
delight the little folks in the early dawn. 

Then drawing aside the curtain when the children 
are all quietly at rest, and looking from the cheery 
room out into the darkness and storm, we shall some 
of us remember the " gradual patience " which has 
come to us " flake by flake," through many a weary 
day, when the storm of sorrow beat upon our heads, 
swaying us in the blast, but failing to uproot our faith 
that still, 

" Beneath the winter's snow 
Lie germs of summer flowers." 



Making Shavings. 



WHAT are you doing, Charlie? " asked a visitor of 
my little four year old boy, who, with flushed 
face and tired hands, was working busily with his 
new set of tools. 

" Trying to make a shaving," sobbed the little fel- 



Making Shavings. 27 

low, worn out with his unsuccessful efforts to accom- 
plish the wonderful feat. 

I have often recalled my little boy's remark in the 
years that have passed since that day, and wondered 
if we are not all more or less engaged in making shav- 
ings. Statesmen, lawyers, merchants, mechanics, la- 
borers, high and low, great and small, rich and poor, all 
are hurrying toward a common goal. There is no time 
to stop ; the great end must be attained, friendship 
must be sacrificed, social intercourse, the pleasures of 
domestic life, taste, culture, travel, each must be set 
aside until a more convenient season. Love is but a 
myth, well enough for poets to sing and women to 
dream of; and home is but a place to dine and sleep 
in. By-and-by, when fortune and fame are reached, 
will be time enough to renew friendships, to enjoy 
family ties, to take rest and recreation. 

So on we go, the men rushing foremost, the women 
trying to stifle their starved souls in the mad pursuit 
of fashion, each making frantic endeavor to outdo the 
other in folly and extravagance, and the children (bless 
them) bringing up the rear, striving to the best of their 
small abilities to emulate the worthy example of their 
illustrious elders. 

By-and-by comes a messenger, urgent, swift, and 
sure, whom there is no putting off till a more conven- 
ient season — time to stop now. What has been 



28 Nothing but Rags. 

gained? what left behind? Only a pile of shavings, to 
be burned perhaps, or scattered to the winds. 



Nothing but Rags. 



IT was one of those grand old mansions which had 
been gradually losing caste for nearly a quarter of a 
century, and while the world of fashion had been qui- 
etly changing its locality, it had become that most for- 
lorn and unsightly object in a great city — a down 
town tenement house, with neglected looking children 
swarming around the door, and shrill-voiced women 
leaning out the windows once draped with lace and 
damask, scolding the children or chatting with a pass- 
ing neighbor. 

High up in one of the attic rooms of the old house 
sat a girl whose appearance was so eiitirely above her 
surroundings, that even the coarse, loud-voiced women 
in the rooms below involuntarily lowered their tones as 
she passed their doors, and wondered what strange 
freak of fortune had cast so fair a flower into the hard 
soil so ill suited to its delicate nature. The small room 
was scrupulously neat ; the walls hung with a cheap 
paper of delicate pattern and tint ; curtains at the win- 
dow looped back with cherry-colored bow ; ivy, gera- 
nium, and heliotrope as bright and fragrant as if grown 



NoTriiN(i HUT Rags. 29 

in the finest conservatory ; a small, white-draped bed, 
an easy chair with cushions of cheap damask, a table 
covered with the same material, a shelf of books, one 
fine engraving handsomely framed, a relic of other 
days, a tiny parlor cook-stove polished until you could 
see your face in it, a little closet containing a few cook- 
ing utensils and a dozen or so pieces of rare old china, 
another relic ; a small oval mirror, another small closet 
containing a scanty wardrobe ; " only this and nothing 
more " were the possessions of the girl who sfts by the 
window early this Thanksgiving morning, darning for 
the fortieth time an old black silk dress, fortunately of 
the richest and heaviest quality, or it would have long 
ago succumbed to the cutting and slashing of that mer- 
ciless old scythe which father time so remorselessly 
swings as he stalks over all that is fairest and brightest 
in his onward flight. 

" Rags ! rags ! Nothing but rags ! " soliloquized the 
pretty lips. " Ah ! poor old dress, we little thought 
the day you came home fresh and new, of the years 
we should keep each other company, and the changes 
we should see. My birth-day, too ! twenty-four to-day ! 
Four years ago I sat at the head of my father's sump- 
tuous table, surrounded by his guests. Dear old 
father ! how proud he was of me, his only child — his 
motherless child, he called me. But was not he both 
father and mother ? Then in one short year came the 



30 Nothing uut Rags. 

crash that swept every thing before it and brought my 
dear old father's gray hairs in sorrow to the grave. Ikit 
better so, perhaps, than toil and poverty in his old age. 
I have youth and strength, and can surely earn a liv- 
ing for myself. If only Howard had been true ! That 
is the bitterest drop in ni)- cu[) of sorrow. A year, a 
whole long )-ear. antl not a word from him. Well, well, 
old dress, I think that you will do now, and we must 
go to church once more together, for is it not Thanks- 
giving? and after all, have we not much to be thankful 
for? With the few music scholars, and the bits of em- 
broider)-, and helping ^^adame Shamwell in hurried 
times, we have managed so far to keep the wolf from 
the door, and Heaven helps those who help them- 
selves. Never fear, old dress ; we shall get through 
the woods with a few tears and scratches, and when 
you have a successor you shall be made into a pretty 
quilt, with stripes of blue, and shall sta)- by me as long 
as I live." 

A ver\- prctt\-. elegant-looking \-oung lad\- emerged 
from the tenement house in street. A close in- 
spection might have disclosed neall\-mcnded gloves, 
carefully varnished shoes, a dress that had seen its best 
da)'s ; but the tout ctiscniblc was elegant, and the grace- 
ful figure and refined face would attract more than a 
passing glance. 

" Where shall I go," mentalh' inquires our )'oung 



Noll I INC wirv Rags. 31 

huly. "To avenue, to the fashionable church 

we used to attend, just for once, to see how many of 
the old set will recoi;-ni/.e me," she decides, and takini;- 
a car, she soon enters with somethiivj; of a tremor, it 
must be confessed, a sanctuary where the (7//c of the 
city congregate to worship. 

She has not the courage to take a conspicuous seat, 
but glides (juietly into the nearest vacant pew. She 
hears not one word of the brief discourse. Memory is 
busy with the past. Phantoms of vanished joys rise 
before her tear-dimmed eyes. The choir is chanting a 
sweet old hymn. The pew-door softly opens, and she 
feels rather than sees a gentleman take a seat near her. 
The service ends, and drawing her vail closely down, 
she turns to go, but a hand is reached out to her, and 
a dear, familiar voice whispers : 

" Marion ! " 

For one instant her heart ceases beating, but many 
eyes are upon them, and pride comes to the rescue. 
She calmly gives her hand as to an old friend, and 
walks out by his side. 

Yes, it is Howard Walling, and a few minutes suffice 
to explain the silence of a year. A fever in a for- 
eign land, that long delayed the time of departure, 
letters miscarried, a fruitless search on his return in the 
places that had once known her but knew her no more, 
and at last happiness, and a visit to the minister at 



32 Mother's Hour. 

once. Not a day, not an hour would he wait. The 
troiissc(7ii, so dear to the heart of the bride, must come 
afterward. Happiness is too precious a boon to be 
risked in this world of mistakes, partings and misun- 
derstandings. Vulgarly speaking, a bird in the hand 
is worth two in the bush. He had his bird in the hand, 
and he meant to keep her there. 

Well, the end of it was, the pretty girl who left the old 
tenement house two hours before with a brave but sad 
heart, thinking she had not a friend in the wide world, 
entered it on the arm of a most devoted and happy- 
looking husband. A recherche dmnex' was ordered from 
the nearest restaurant, for Mrs. Howard Walling in- 
sisted upon taking her first Thanksgiving dinner after 
her marriage in her own house. 



Mother's Hour. 

" 'Tis late at night, and in the realms of sleep 
My little lambs are folded like the flocks." 

IN the bed two sturdy lads, tired with play, are 
sleeping peacefully, while visions of snow forts and 
sledding, pop-guns and pistols, drums, swords and sol- 
dier caps are mingled with spelling-books and arith- 
metic, slates and pencils, black-boards and school disci- 
pline. On the crib pillow a little cherub face is lying, 
framed in a tangle of golden curls, the chubby hands 



Mother's Hour. 33 

holding tightly a whip and a trumpet, the last, and, 
therefore, the most precious acquisition to the baby 
treasures. 

And now comes mother's hour for repairing the dam- 
ages of the day. Here a patch, and there a darn, a 
button in this place, a string in that. " Here, Katey, 
blacken the shoes, and a little varnish for baby's." 
Now empty the pockets. Four rusty nails, a circus 
bill, one box percussion caps, two nine -pins, a card, 
three stones, one iron ring, one piece rattan, marbles, 
balls of worsted and twine, pop-corn, one horse shoe, 
dirt, and old papers. And now all is ready for another 
day, and the next night the work must be done over 
again, and the next, and the next ; but, mothers, don't 
complain, for long as we may for rest, and quiet, and 
leisure, these are our best days, and the time will come 
all too soon when our little children will be grown up 
and leave the home nest to make their own way in the 
world, to struggle and work, to succeed or to fail, as 
the case may be. 

The house will be very quiet and very neat then. 
No more " picking up," no stockings to darn, no knees 
to patch, no buttons to sew on, no little sticky hands 
to mark windows, and doors, and furniture ; no curls 
to smooth, no faces to wash. Then we shall have leis- 
ure for all the things we think we should like to do. 
We can read and write, visit and travel, go and come, 
3 



34 Mother's Hour. 

as we please. Ah ! but there will be no dear little 
faces at the window watching for us, no little feet hur- 
rying down the stairs to see what mother has brought ; 
and I do not look forward with any pleasure to that 
time ; I want to hold fast to every day. Each day is 
more precious than gold that I have my little children 
around me ; and sometimes, when I hear of an entire 
family being removed from this world by some acci- 
dent or casualty — some " mysterious dispensation of 
Providence" — I think what a happy fate. All safely 
together, where no change, no sorrow, no parting shall 
ever come — where " Love's precious chain is not tar- 
nished nor riven." 

Then, mothers, do not fret, and worry, and grow 
" nervous " at the demands made upon your time and 
patience. Let us try to be happy, and to make the 
children happy, not by a weak pampering and indulg- 
ence, but by giving them something to do that will in- 
terest them, and by interesting ourselves in their pur- 
suits and pleasures ; and you, mothers, who are so 
blessed as to have no vacant seats around your hearths, 
no tiny shoes nor little tress of sunny hair to weep 
over, no clothes hanging in the closet that will never 
be worn again, no drawer filled with memories of a 
sweet young life that has gone out forever from your 
homes — when you are inclined to think your children 
a trouble and an annoyance, consider for a moment 



A Tour among the Housekeepers. 35 

howyour lives would be shattered if the fiat should go 
forth, " Those angels are not thine." 



A Tour Among the Housekeepers, 



FIRST upon our list stands the name of Mrs. Shrew, 
and we take a hurried, trembling survey of the 
mansion as we ascend its irreproachably clean steps. A 
blank, chilly looking exterior, windows glistening from 
a recent polishing, white shades from basement to attic, 
each drawn on an exact line with the upper part of the 
lower sash ; no relief of drapery, nor plant, nor vine, 
nor baby fingers drumming on the panes — the one 
catches dust, the others make dirt. But taking " our 
life in our hand " we make the acquaintance of this 
wiry, rasping creature, whose nerves appear by some 
freak of nature to have been placed outside the cuti- 
cle, subject to the wear and tear of every adverse 
wind that blows, and the adverse winds blow almost 
continually around her dwelling. Husband, children 
and servants are made wretched in the vain attempt to 
keep carpets, furniture and wearing apparel in an im- 
maculate condition. No vagrant cat, nor dog, dare so 
much as thrust a nose through the area railing. No 
child must whittle, cut papers, sharpen pencils, nor 
make litter of any kind within those four square walls . 



36 A Tour Among the Housekeepers. 

In pleasant weather the dust is a constant annoyance, 
on a rainy day the mud is still more intolerable, and 
woe to the unlucky wight who enters those doors with- 
out spending a quarter of an hour at mat and scraper. 

Next comes the name of Mrs. Fuss, who is seldom 
seen without her sleeves turned up and head enveloped 
in a handkerchief, sweeping, dusting, scrubbing, baking, 
boiling, stewing. She comes to the table in an untidy 
dress, a patch of flour on her nose, a smutch of pot 
black on her hand, the perspiration streaming from her 
face. Her miml never soars above the level of her daily 
cares, and family and friends are entertained with the 
all-absorbing topic. 

Just across the street in a house with tattered, dingy 
looking lace curtains at the windows, and a slovenly, 
good-natured looking housemaid standing in the door, 
we pay our respects to Mrs. Slipshod, the easy, care- 
less housekeeper, whose family and servants are left to 
their own devices. She rises late in the morning, does 
her hair up a la chinoise, slips on a wrapper, minus a 
collar, thrusts her feet into an old pair of husband's 
slippers, and her morning toilet is complete. 

Breakfast is served in the same easy, informal style. 
Husband hastily swallows a cup of sloppy coffee, partly 
masticates a bit of tough steak and a dough)- buck- 
wheat cake, and hastens to his office in a limp, button- 
less shirt, a coat with a rip in the shoulder and the 



A Tour Among the Housekeepers. T,y 

buttons worn through, fingers protruding througli his 
gloves, and the toes of his stockings in a condition 
that, were they visible, would throw Mrs. Shrew into 
convulsions of horror — (par parcnthese). Is it any 
wonder that Jones, his sleek, jolly-looking bachelor 
friend, gives a half- suppressed chuckle as he passes 
him, and inwardly congratulates himself on having es- 
caped the matrimonial noose ? Next, Mary, Bessie 
and Johnny and Tommy and Charlie, are hustled off 
to school, shoe-strings hanging, hands smeared with 
syrup, and rents in dresses and jackets drawn together 
with a convenient pin. When all are fairly out of the 
way Mrs. Slipshod, with a sigh of relief, gives an order 
or two to cook and chambermaid, and sinking into the 
comfortable depth of an easy chair, passes the time 
until dinner, alternately napping and reading the last 
novel by that charming author, Frothiana Fitzbubble. 
To rest our tired nerves let us make our last call 
upon that rai'a avis who combines the useful with the 
beautiful, the practical with the poetical, the sweet, 
bright, cheery soul, who makes home the dearest spot 
on earth ; whose husband adores her, whose children 
are never so happy as in the safe, warm nest under the 
mother wing ; whose friends find her always serene, 
sympathetic and cordial ; whose house is in dainty and 
exquisite order without hurry or fuss; whose hair is 
never frowsy and dress " not fit to be seen ; " who has 



38 Mr. Mushroom. 

time for reading, music, lectures, concerts, and still gan 
be that being so essential to the comfort of a home — a 
good housekeeper. 



Mr. Mushroom. 



HE is perhaps the most entirely self-satisfied person 
in the universe. No noble longings of the spirit 
disturb the placid flow of his existence ; his soul is 
never stirred to a glorious ardor in the grand marches 
of life. Enthusiasm on any subject is, in his opinion, 
decidedly vulgar. 

In early life engaged in some humble but useful call- 
ing, he was modest, civil and obliging, but he has 
been prosperous beyond his expectations, the wheel of 
fortune in its revolutions has borne him gently and 
gradually upward ; or, he has made some fortunate 
venture which has suddenly lifted him from the mire 
of poverty into the lap of luxury. 

In prosperity he waxeth pompous, becometh wise in 
his own conceit, and inflated after the manner of a 
small air baloon, which escaping from the hands of its 
possessor goes soaring away, imagining itself another 
world sailing through space. Many who have aided 
and encouraged him with their influence and their 
means have by some sudden jerk or disarrangement of 



Mr. Mushroom. 39 

the machinery, which keeps this wonderful wheel in 
motion, been thrown to the ground. Does the recip- 
ient of their favors with sympathetic face and ready 
hand reach down to help them regain a seat ? Never ! 
Nobility abideth not in the soul of the Mushroom, 
and gratitude is a stranger to his breast. Money is his 
God and moneyed men his idols. Let not the unfortu- 
nate look to him for sympathy, much less for aid. 
" Every man for himself," is his motto. In religion he 
professes that which is most fashionable, and attends 
church where wife and daughter will make the acquaint- 
ance of the most distinguished of the elite of society. 
In politics he advocates the side which is the most 
popular, and will farthest advance his own interests. 
He looks down from his lofty eminence upon people of 
gentle birth, and breeding, culture and refinement, not 
noticing the quiet, half-amused, half-contemptuous 
smile with which they pass him. In his home are 
gathered all the luxuries that money can command ; a 
profusion of mirrors, gilding, frescoing, rosewood and 
brocatelle, the very latest style of furniture and gar- 
nishing throughout. One can easily imagine himself in 
a first-class upholsterer's warerooms, nothing cheapt 
nor common, nor mean, from attic to basement. Noth- 
ing whatever — except the soul of the owner, that is so 
cheap, so common, so mean, so infinitesimal, that it 
will take ages of eternity to develop it into a sense of 



40 Ticking of the Watch. 

its own littleness. Ah, Mr. Mushroom ! would that 
some power the gift would give you to see yourself as 
others sec you. 



Ticking of ihe Watch. 

HAVE you ever lain at the solemn hour of mid- 
night, or later, in the "wee sma' hours" when 
all the household were slumbering, with wide open, 
sleepless eyes, thinking of some departed joy, regret- 
ting some mistake, grieving over some misunderstand- 
ing, or by some strange, cruel fascination of self-tor- 
ture, tearing open some old wound to bleed afresh that 
all through the busy day is kept secwely bandaged ? 
And then, when thought has grown intolerable, has 
your attention suddenly been arrested by the ticking 
of the watch underneath your pillow ? Tick, tick, 
tick, faster almost than you can count — tick, tick, tick. 
And did you think with what wonderful rapidity the 
seconds are Hying off into minutes, the minutes into 
hours, the hours into days, the days into weeks, the 
weeks into months, the months into years ? And in a 
little while it is all over, all the heat and the burden, 
the restless strivings, the heart aches, the perished 
hopes and ambitions, all laid aside. Oh ! but happi- 
ness is such a glorious thing we say, and our hands 



Children, 'Sunshine, Shadows. 41 

tremble and grow feverish with a longing to grasp it. 
One moment it is just within our reach, the next, a 
breath of air tosses it away — away from our out- 
stretched hands, and we sigh and moan over our dis- 
appointment, and chafe, and worry, and fret under the 
discipline. We cannot see the good of all the chisel- 
ing we undergo, and we can only hope and believe that 
we shall finally come from the hand of the great Sculp- 
tor noble and symmetrical in our development— when 
the soul's "mortal longings, its baffled hopes, shall be- 
come dim in the light of those infinite longings, which 
spread over it, soft and holy as dawn." 



Children, Sunshine, Shadows. 



CHILDREN all love the sunlight, and turn to it as 
naturally as the flowers lift their dewy petals to 
catch the first ray of the morning sun as it peeps over 
the garden wall. How wistfully the little faces look out 
of the window on a stormy day, wondering why it can- 
not always be pleasant weather. But " some days must 
be dark and dreary," so the poet Longfellow tells us, 
and so we have all learned by experience. But cannot 
the little boys and girls make sunshine in the house 
when the heavens are clouded and the rain is falling 
outside? 



42 Children, Sunshine, Shadows. 

We are all very much inclined to take the good 
things God gives us as a matter of course, and to fret 
and worry over the little inconveniences that spring up 
in our pathway ; but, by-and-by, as we grow older, 
some real trouble comes upon us, some great calamity 
befalls us, and then how trifling seem all those little 
ills we made so much of. Ah ! if we could only go 
back just a little in the path we have been traveling, 
we should gather the flowers more gratefully, and not 
mind the pricking of a little thorn occasionally. 

Dear children, do not sulk and look cross because vou 
cannot always do just what pleases you, but keep a 
sunny face, and try to gather happiness from little 
things, from birds, flowers and music. The world is full 
of beauty ; keep your eyes and your hearts open to re- 
ceive it. Do not think that wealth and fine clothes and 
society arc the only desirable things in life. Each is 
well enough in its place, but sometimes wealth takes 
wings, and society flies with it. And then, if we have 
no resources within ourselves, life becomes a burden 
indeed. 

• Shall I tell you one of the things that in my daily 
life affords me a world of quiet enjoyment? It is this 
— only a box of flowers outside a large arched window. 
Over it is a wire trellis, placed there by one who can do 
nothing more for my pleasure in this world. And 
every spring I set out my roses and geraniums, fragrant 



Children, Sunshine, Shadows. 43 

heliotrope and mignonette, and sow morning glories ; 
and when the soft south wind stirs the leaves and 
flowers, I often f^mcy I hear echoes of gentle voices in 
the air, and all through the summer this little box of 
flowers gives me sweet and pleasant thoughts. 

Then I can look off over acres of waving grass, and 
see pretty cottages and handsome mansions embow- 
ered in foliage, and lie on my lounge when I return 
from the city, tired of its hot, noisy streets, and gaze 
upon grand old hills that seem like dear and familiar 
friends, whether in their garb of summer verdure or 
winter snow, and in either they are equally dear and 
beautiful. 

Cultivate a taste for nature ; and if you live in a 
close and crowded city, have a few flowers in your win- 
dow, and see how much pleasure it will give you to 
watch the unfolding of leaf and bud and blossom. 
Sometimes watch the white clouds drifting over the 
clear blue sky, and fancy them pure and loving spirits 
floating away from earth to a brighter home, whose 
waters are clearer, blossoms sweeter, and music softer 
than human senses can conceive. If you are so fortu- 
nate as to be taken for the summer months to some 
quiet retreat in the country, enjoy every moment of 
your blessed freedom from city restraints and tram- 
mels. And you, children, whose lot it is to be reared 
in the pure atmosphere of a country home, thank hea- 



44 Crape on the Door. 

ven for the privilege, and never foolishly long for the 
shams and gauds of a city life. 

Bask in the sunshine while you may — sit in the 
shadows when you must. 



Crape on the Door. 







F the stately mansion and the humble cottage — 
the abode of wealth and luxury and the unpre- 
tending home of the mechanic. In one the fashion- 
able undertaker comes with quiet step, and arranges, 
regardless of expense, a funeral that shall do credit to 
his establishment, and shall in all respects be worthy 
the illustrious dead. Hot-house flowers have been 
ordered at a price that would keep the wolf a whole 
year from the homes of a dozen poor families in the 
next street, the coffin is magnificent in velvet, and sil- 
ver mountings ; the mourners have scarce had time to 
think of the dead lying in state in the darkened par- 
lors, orders to milliners and dressmakers and the fitting 
of crape and bombazine, have kept them in such a 
whirl. But finally all is arranged after the most ap- 
proved and latest style, a studied and eloquent eulogy 
is pronounced and the stately and imposing pageant 
moves slowly toward the " Silent City." 

Just around the corner, from the door of an humble 



Crape on the Door. 45 

dwelling-, starts another funeral. A few simple com- 
forting words have been spoken, a short prayer offered. 
It consists of a plain coffin and hearse, a carriage or 
two, and a procession formed by a few true-hearted 
friends with sad faces. Underneath the coffin-lid a 
white rose and two or three tiny buds, placed in the 
dear hand by wife and little children. Down the street 
moves the little cortege, waiting at the crossing for the 
hearse of the rich man, with nodding plumes, and the 
long line of carriages to pass. Onward they go, one to 
a stately tomb, the other to an humble grave, where a 
broken-hearted wife and children shall often come to 
weep bitter tears and lay a little offering of simple 
flowers. 

And what of these souls that went, each alone, on 
its journey? Wealth availed nothing to the rich man 
in the hour when death took him by the hand ; love 
could not follow the poor man across that deep river 
which separates the visible from the invisible, yet per- 
chance that humble man, with toil-hardened hands and 
care-worn face, stands to-day transfigured, glorified, 
far, far above the one who, perhaps, used his wealth for 
the advancement of his own selfish schemes and the 
gratification of his sensual appetites. Heaven knows 
who are the truly rich, and pities with an infinite pity 
and tenderness the sorrowing heart that has " crape on 
the door," whether among the wealthy or the lowly. 



46 Other People's Boys. 



Other People's Boys. 

1HAVE made the assertion elsewhere and I repeat 
it : I have a weakness for boys. In juvenile ver- 
nacular I don't go back on the boys; yet all things 
have a limit and it is possible to get a surfeit of the 
good things of this world. When one's yard is filled 
with an amateur circus company, and one's trees and 
racks are converted into seats for spectators ; when the 
front steps present a goodly array of youth engaged in 
the exciting pastime of plastering the pavement and 
other convenient objects, with clay which has been 
moistened and worked over wdth praiseworthy indus- 
try until the proper degree of stickiness has been at- 
tained ; when one's neck has become permanently 
twisted from much stretching to see that one's off- 
spring are not being led into paths wherein lurk snares 
and pitfalls ; when the summer evening is made hide- 
ous by unearthly howls and the tramping of a multi- 
tude of feet ; when home is no longer a synonym of 
peace but a place of rendezvous for the larger portion 
of the youthful masculine element within a quarter of 
a square mile ; when parents shirk all responsibility of 
looking after their own, and arc quite comfortable and 
content so long as their restless boys are out of the 



Other People's Boys. 47 

house and do not trouble them ; then Hfe becomes a 
weariness and a burden, and we sigh for a lodge in 
some vast wilderness, or a home on the rolling deep. 

We give the subject hours of perplexed considera- 
tion, and arrive at no satisfactory solution of the diffi- 
cult question, not " what shall we do with our boys," 
which has been recently discussed in a series of articles 
by Mr. Charles Barnard, but what shall we do with the 
boys of our neighbors ? We read somewhere, years 
ago, of an infant exterminator. A long suffering per- 
son, wrought up to the highest pitch of human endur- 
ance, constructed an apparatus which was swiftly and 
silently dropped from an upper window, the offending 
innocent drawn up, quietly throttled and as swiftly and 
silently deposited on terra-firma until all the innocents 
in that locality were exterminated, and peace and quiet- 
ness reigned throughout that region. We have never 
received a call from the agent of a patent infant exter- 
minator, and so we presume, like many another valua- 
ble invention, it has been lost to the world, and " what 
shall we do with other people's boys ? " still remains an 
open question. 



48 A Joyful Thanksgiving. 



A Joyful Thanksgiving. 



IT was Thanksgiving Eve. The short, bright after- 
noon had merged into twilight, and twilight had 
been succeeded by moonlight, the only light that 
brightened the little room in which Mrs. Arnold sat, 
holding in her lap her little six-year old daughter, save, 
perhaps, a faint glimmer from a low fire that was half- 
smouldering in a small cook-stove, for it was necessary 
to economize coals while the mild weather lasted, in 
order to keep comfortable when the biting cold should 
come. 

The relentless wolf was at the door, with his ugly 
paw upon the latch, just ready to enter. It was only 
by strenuous efforts that he had been kept at bay so 
long. One by one the little keepsakes and relics of 
better days had found their way to the pawnbroker's, 
until but one remained, a jeweled locket, containing on 
one side the pictured face of a noble-looking man, on 
the other a lock of raven hair. 

" Mamma," said little Nellie, raising her curly head 
from its resting-place, " tell me about Thanksgiving 
before papa died. Did we live in a nice house, with 
pretty curtains, and flowers in the windows, and bright 
lights in the evening like those we pass sometimes? 



A Joyful Thanksgiving. 49 

And did papa bring home a great turkey, and oranges, ' 
and nice things, the way other Httle girls' papas do? " 

" Yes, darhng." And tears fell softly on the sunny 
curls. " We had a bright, happy home, and papa did 
every thing that other papas do — brought so many 
nice things for mamma and his little girl, and was so 
proud and happy. But cannot my little girl remember 
the dear papa a little — just a very little? " 

" Yes ; I remember when we rode, and papa let me 
drive sometimes, and a great black man came and took 
the horse away to the stable, and — and that is all." 

Then silence fell in the little room, and memory was 
busy recalling the golden hours of the past. One by 
one the years rose up and glided by in shadowy pro- 
cession. First the phantom of a petted only daughter, 
the pride and darling of four older brothers, all dead 
save one, and he a wanderer in distant lands, ignorant, 
no doubt, of his sister's misfortunes, as letter after let- 
ter had failed to bring a reply. Next an idolized wife. 
Parents are called to that land where want and sorrow 
are unknown, yet the tender care of a devoted hus- 
band supplies every need of her heart, and the natural 
sorrow soon gives place to a gentle regret. 

Then comes the thought of the wretched present, and 

all the blessed and blissful Thanksgiving Eves of her life 

rise up in contrast to this — a half-furnished, comfortless 

room, in a very ordinary tenement house, a pinched fire, 

4 



50 A Joyful Thanksgiving. 

no light ; the one bright snot the Httle sunny head 
resting in blissful unconsciousness on her bosom. 

She gently and carefully disrobes the little sleeping 
figure and lays her in the bed, then prepares for a walk 
in the frosty evening air. Quickly she removes the 
lock of raven liair which clings lovingly, it seems, 
around her fingers, takes the pictured face from its 
resting-place, kisses it almost frantically, wraps both in 
paper, and places them in her bosom. Then, taking 
the locket, she presses her lips to the warm, ros)- cheek 
of her darling, and closing the door quietly, walks rap- 
idl)' tcnvartl the place which has become so familiar to 
her of late, and whose sign is three brazen balls. 

Alas ! and alas ! how many trembling, shrinking fig- 
ures have passed within these doors ! Want antl misery 
have set their seal on each wretched soul that enters. 

Very smiling and unctious is the corpulent pawn- 
broker as he greets his victim, for well he knows that a 
good bargain awaits him. 

" Good evening, madame. You've some more lit- 
tle trinket you will sell ? Oh ! ah ! only a locket — not 
much worth. How mooch you want ? I gif you two 
dollar, as you are an old customer, and 1 make notting 
— not five cent, I assure }'ou. It is valuable ? Oh, 
not much worth, I gif you my word. Well, well, I gif 
you five dollar. I don't like to see a i)rett}' lad}' in 
trouble, and I lose money — I do, indeed." 



A Joyful Thanksgiving. 51 

Poor soul ! she takes the pittance with a weary si^^h, 
and the door closes after her with a bang. She goes 
half da/,ed and wretched through the streets, buys a 
bit of cheap meat for the Thanksgiving dinner, an 
orange for her darling, looks at the tempting dainties 
in the windows, and wonders, if she cannot get work, 
what will become of them, now her last resource is 



gone. 

She mounts the three long flights of stairs that lead 
to her miserable room. A bright fire is shining through 
the crevices of the door. Great Heaven ! has the 
child awakened, and, trying to get a light, set fire to 
the room ? 

She throws open the door, and finds — only a kero- 
sene lamp, furnished by a neighbor ; but — astounding 
sight ! a tall, bronzed and bearded gentleman rises 
from her rickety rocking-chair, witli darling little Nel- 
lie wrapped in a blanket, clinging to his neck. Can 
she be dreaming ? What does it mean ? 

" Sister, dear, dear sister, have I found you at last, 
and in such a place as this ? " 

She stretches out her arms, totters and falls, but joy 
seldom proves fatal. The happy trio are soon sitting 
by the little cook-stove, which is heaped to the very 
top with a glowing mass of coals, and care, and suffer- 
ing, and anxiety are things of the past. 

On the morrow, in one of the finest hotels in the 



52 SuMMKK Friends. 

city, little Nellie spends the happiest day, and eats the 
best dinner she ever remembers, and every family in 
that tenement house has a turkey, and all the accom- 
paniments that go to make a first-class Thanksgiving 
dinner. 



Summer Friends. 



ONI"', ol our motlern essa)' writers sa)'s : 
" Wni can have e\'er)' thing t>n earth you want 
when )t)u don't need an)' thing." 

Like many another disappointed soul she had prob- 
ably learned this fact from sad experience. When we 
are prosper(^us, how friends swarm around us, like bees 
around a honey-laden llower. How we are flattered, 
petted antl caressed — we can have every thing on 
earth we want by paying for it. How " all the sheaves 
bow down to our sheaf." How frequent are the invi- 
tations to ritle, because, forsooth, we ha\'e a carriage 
of our own. How numerous are the cards to lectures, 
concerts, operas, because we have a husband, father or 
brother ready and willing to escort us. How attentive 
the clerks in Yardstick & Co.'s fashionable emporium ! 
The butcher, the grocer — how smiling, how affable, 
how obliging. How profound the bows, how bland 
the smiles, that greet us while taking an afternoon 



Summer Friends. 53 

drive. How pleasant to know we have such friends 
should misfortune overtake us, should a dark cloud 
dim the brit;htness of our heaven. I low they would 
gather around us, each striving to outdo the other in 
consoling, in hel[)ing us to regain our footing. 

There's a rumble in the distance, a cloud gathering, 
darker and darker, a crash, and our brilliant sky is 
black as midnight. We grope blindly, we look vainly 
for one ray of light in the darkness. Where are the 
friends of yesterday, the ones 7ue have succored in t/irir 
day of need, sustained in their affliction, and given of 
the best treasures of our hearts and lives? Where, 
indeed? Echo answers — where? In their stead we 
receive a few notes of condolence, a few formal calls, 
the stereotyped remark : 

" If there is any thing we can do for you, let us 
know." 

Perhaps some little favor asked of an old friend is 
met with a grave face and demurring voice, which sends 
us flying home with a bitterness in our hearts too deep 
for words or tears. Truly we can have every thing on 
earth we want when we don't need any thing, and 
when we do, heaven hell) us. 



54 Independence Day and the Little Ones. 



Independence Day and the Little 
Ones. 



BOOM, boom, bang ! Pop, fizzle, bang ! The day 
of orations, fire crackers, and burnt fingers, green 
fruit, root beer and cholera morbus, pop-guns and pis- 
tols is here at last. How the months have been 
counted by the juveniles, beginning as soon as the 
holidays were well over, and Santa Claus and Christ- 
mas trees had become joys of the past. And then 
the weeks, and finally the days, until that last day but 
one arrives, when cautious papas and mammas are 
begged and implored, and entreated with the most sol- 
emn assurances of their careful and discreet handling 
for powder crackers, torpedoes, rockets, Roman can- 
dles — any thing, every thing that will make the loud- 
est possible noise. 

Then, " early to bed and early to rise " is a maxim 
that is cheerfully practiced for once in the year, and 
"you must wake and call me early — call me early, 
mother dear," is the last sound that issues from the 
nursery. At various times through the "wee sma' hours'' 
is heard the inquiry, "Mamma, is it almost morning?" 
and before the birds have had time to proclaim the 
dawn, there's a hurrying on of stockings and shoes, 



Independence Day and the Little Ones. 55 

pants and jackets. No matter about the buttons ; 
never mind looking up the hats — that can be done by 
and by. And tlien commences the day's doings. Bang! 
goes a great big cracker first to inaugurate the day ; 
then the small ones come in to do the popping, or, if 
they refuse to " pop," they must be made to " sizzle " 
(I think that's the right word. Isn't it, boys?) 

Then mamma picks up things, and brings order out 
of the confusion, and while the house is quiet sits down 
for a moment to think ; and, perhaps, her thoughts are 
busy with the past, and her eyes are full of unshed 
tears, for these anniversaries are often fraught with sad 
memories to the elder members of the household. 
Perhaps she is thinking of a darling child, who was 
wont to welcome the day as gladly as his brothers did 
this year — of the bright, sweet face, the quick feet run- 
ning up the stairs for "more crackers and punk." And 
then thought in an instant carries her up to the beauti- 
ful " God's acre " beside a simple marble headstone, 
whereon is written " Our Noble Boy," and the tears 
refuse to be held back any longer. But the children 
are out, and it don't matter, and she will not bring a 
cloud over the sunshine of their day by speaking of 
the dear older brother, who was first in all their sports 
just a few short years ago, and who to-day is 

" Out of reach, beyond kiss, in the clay 
Where the violets press nearer than we." 



56 The News Rov. 

The aiii;"els lo\-c tliosc who \ovc Httlc children. Let 
us make them happy, especially on all holidays, enter- 
ing- heartily into their plans for enjoyment, not spoil- 
ing half their pleasure by giving grudgingly the few 
pence, shillings or dollars which our means will allow 
for their gratification. Let us rather make some per- 
sonal sacrifice than disappoint them, for the remem- 
brance o[' a free and jo\-ous childhood is something to 
be cariicLl w ilh us through the ehi;ckered scenes of after 
)'ears, and often proves the sole oasis in the desert of 
main' li\es. 



The Ne^vs Boy. 



TLMES! Evi-niNi;- Times / Post! yoiirnal > Have a 
fii/iis, sir? OnK- three cents." 

" Get out with N'our papers." 

Oh. you mean old curmudgeon, if I had only one- 
tenth o'i Nour mone)- wouldn't I bu}' the whole bundle 
and send that little, ragged, freckle-faced chap home 
rejoicing? Oon't 1 know that just as likel)- as not that 
little fellow has got a sick mother at home, and a 
drunken father, or no father at all, and a little tired 
sister, whose arms ache from carr\ing a heavy baby all 
da\-? And (.lon't I know just how that miserable room 
looks, with its broken chairs aiul its patched windows 



The News Boy. 57 

and the old tabic and rickety closet, with only part of 
a loaf of bread in it to feed all those mouths, just as 
well as if I had been there ? 

Oh, Mr. Millionaire, if I had your money wouldn't I 
buy out the whole stock of shoe-strings of all the boys 
on the corners, and all the bouquets of every little wist- 
fnl-eycd girl that I met, and all the papers of the rag- 
gedest boys on the street, and make a big bonHre for 
their amusement ? And haven't I seen many a little 
fellow, with a generosity that might shame you, sir, 
spend a penny or two of his day's earnings at a fruit 
stand and divide the purchase with two or three of his 
less successful comrades ? 

Unlike the amiable and sweet-tempered Miss Murd- 
stone, who, as a general thing, didn't like boys, I think, 
" as a general thing," I do like them. If there's any 
thing in the world I have a weakness for it is for boys 
(blessings on them, if one could only keep them boys); 
and when the holidays come, with such a world of hap- 
piness to the more fortunate, and I see these little half- 
frozen urchins, with hands thrust in their ragged pock- 
ets, looking in the windows of the toy-shops at the 
treasures so dear to the hearts of children, how I long 
to take every one of them in and buy a sled, a knife, 
or a pair of skates, or a book of wonderful pictures 
and fairy tales, and make all the poor little hearts glad 
for one day, at least. Heaven bless you, little news- 



58 I Have No Friends to Speak of. 

boy, and all other little half-starved souls who some- 
times, like older people, wonder why the good things 
of this world are so unequally distributed. There are 
people who pass you in the streets with pitying hearts, 
although you do not know it, and one who loved little 
children said : " Of such is the kingdom of heaven." 



I Have No Friends to Speak of. 



TELL me of your friends," said a nurse in one of 
the crowded wards of a city hospital, where a 
poor Magdalene lay dying, a fair, frail young girl with 
wasted form and mournful dark eyes. " I have no 
friends to speak of," came from the pallid lips, and great 
tears rolled down the sunken cheeks. Ah, poor erring 
one ! far more sinned against than sinning, where is he 
who won the love of your girlish heart to while away an 
idle hour, who enticed you from your peaceful country 
home to the great city and then flung away the heart 
that would have endured all things for his sake, leav- 
ing it maddened with the agony of betrayal ? Oh, 
vile, selfish libertine ! In a home surrounded by every 
luxury that wealth can procure, flattered and caressed 
by the people who refused your victim the place of the 
lowest menial in their service, and turned her into the 
street to the mercy of others of your class ; petted by 



I Have No Friends to Speak of. 59 

mothers with marriagable daughters and adored by the 
brainless flirts of society who draw their immaculate 
skirts about them in passing the victim of your lust. 
Riding serenely in your carriage, dispensing bows and 
smiles to the belles of society, paying your devotions 
here and there, dropping an old love when it has be- 
come stale, and satiating for a fresher one, your idol 
to-day, an outcast to-morrow. 

. Oh, wretch ! who sits in high places, you are like a 
whited sepulchre, fair to look upon, but rotten within, 
and so surely as the heaven's arch above us, your day 
of recompense shall come. 

" Oh it was pitiful, in a whole city full ; 
Home she had none." 

No kind father's hand to lift the dying head, no 
tender mother's eyes to receive the last dying look, no 
brother's nor gentle sister's tears shed beside the dying 
bed. Poor, weak, erring, tired soul, whose earthly 
course is nearly run. One who knows our weakness, 
and our temptations, and judges more mercifully than 
we judge one another, has said, " Neither do I con- 
demn thee ; go and sin no more." 

" Lift her up tenderly, take her with care. 
Fashioned so slenderl)', young and so fair." 

She has gone where never more shall the words be 
breathed from pallid lips, " I have no friends to 
speak of." 



6o The Practical Woman. 



The Practical AA^oman. 



THE thoroughly practical woman is destitute of im- 
agination. Not a shred of such cobwebs as poe- 
try, sentiment or romance, ever lingers in her brain. 
She is a good housekeeper, in the common usage of 
the term, tears up carpets every spring, fills the house 
with painters, carpenters, and paper hangers, scrubs' 
paint and whitens ceilings, scolds children and servants, 
and finishes at night with a candle lecture, because Mr. 
Jones came home late and forgot to see the plumber 
about those new faucets for the bath-room. 

The autumn comes with gorgeous hues, and mist- 
crowned hills, and purple sunsets, but to the mind of 
the practical woman it brings only visions of pickling, 
canning and preserving. 

She reads the daily papers — certainly all the mar- 
riages, deaths, murders and casualties — but she can- 
not tell you the title of one of Dickens' works, or of 
Longfellow's or Whittier's poems. She prides herself 
upon her firmness. When she says " No," always 
means it, and uses that negative invariably when any 
scheme of pleasure is proposed. Her will is law in the 
household, and her husband is influenced to her own 
narrow views of life, or driven to seek sympathy out- 
side of home. 



The Practical Woman. 6i 

Motherhood has no sacred meanin<^, children are 
in the way, and brought up because it is inevitable. 
She thinks much of the accumulation of money and a 
safe investment. Her mind seldom soars above the 
level of her daily cares and duties, and her friends are 
regaled with a recital of her numerous trials, perplexi- 
ties, aches and ills. 

She attends church regularly with her children, and 
dozes over a religious book on the Sabbath afternoon. 
She reviles her neighbor, who trains vines over her 
porch, and who dances and plays croquet with her child- 
ren, and makes home an earthly paradise to her hus- 
band, as light-minded and frivolous — a mere " Frou- 
Frou," not dreaming that poor little " Frou-Frou," 
with her feminine longing for admiration and love, is a 
more truly spirituelle woman than herself — a woman 
of finer sympathies and intuitions, of a warmer heart, 
a sweeter, more lovable nature. 

Practical common sense is an excellent quality, yet it 
does not form a perfect female character, unless blended 
with imagination and those gentle qualities without 
which a woman's nature is sterile and unlovable. 



62 The Little Hearse. 



The Little Hearse. 



WE have seen that little white hearse pass and 
repass our door for many a year with its pre- 
cious freight — carrying up many a mother's idol 
and returning empty. And oh ! how we have 
mourned with those stricken mothers, thinking of the 
empty cribs where sunny heads once rested, of the half- 
worn shoes, the broken toys, the drawer filled with lit- 
tle garments to be taken out and moistened with bitter 
tears, but never again to press the fair, plump limbs of 
the little darling. 

But we never thought that little hearse could stop at 
our door — could carry away one of our precious ones 
— our bright, blue-eyed darlings. But at last it came 
and took from our arms a little winsome baby, just 
learning to lisp '' mamma," and our crib was empty. 
Oh ! those weary days, those dreadful nights, when we 
wandered, with empty arms, through the house, won- 
dering why God would not take us, too, thinking our 
work was done, there was nothing worth living for, 
and still we had other little ones looking to us for love 
and care. 

So twelve months passed — the little white hearse 
stopped again at our door, taking our bright, beautiful 
boy, our first-born, the promise, the joy, the glory of 



The Little Hearse. 63 

our lives, snatched away with scarce a warning. This 
bright afternoon of early summer I sit at my window 
and look at the flowers he used to tend ; the cherry 
tree he loved to climb ; his books are lying on the table ; 
his clothes are hanging in the closet, the ball in one 
pocket, the port-monnaie in another ; and I wonder if 
my big boy is nevei coming back to me. I look at 
the door half expecting to see the bright face flash 
in. I listen to hear the bounding step on the stair. 
And, God help me ! I think of many an impatient 
word that is like a knife in my heart now, and I long 
with a longing that none but a mother's heart can 
know to take him in my arms — to lay his head on my 
breast — to ask him to forgive me. Oh! mothers be 
patient with your little ones, and you who have no 
broken links in your circle think how soon one of those 
dear ones, who sometimes worry and fret you, may be 
called to a higher school, where no regrets, no long- 
ing, can bring them back to grant the forgiveness you 
would so gladly ask, for some hasty word or act which 
brought tears to the bright eyes now closed forever. 
And mothers who are weeping over little garments 
made last year for little robust bodies now gone for 
ever from your sight — mothers standing by little graves 
over which the myrtle twines — thinking that down 
there in the darkness lies the beautiful form that one 
year ago filled your homes with light and gladness ; let 



64 Waiting. 

us try to wait and be patient, though the days are so 
weary and the nights are so terrible. Let us try to do 
our duty to the little ones left, and make their lives 
sunny, so that the void left by the big brother, or the 
little sister, or the pet baby of the household, may not 
be felt in their little hearts as it is in ours. And one 
day God grant that when the little ones shall need us 
here no longer, the veil shall be cast aside, the eyes 
watching " beside the golden gate " for us shall once 
more meet ours, " and there shall be no more parting." 



Waiting. 



" Learn to wait. The Gods will not be hurried." 

A RE we not all waiting? 
j[\ Childhood waiting for the freedom of youth. 
Youth longing for the opportunities of manhood, to 
grapple and wrestle with and conquer the world. 
Manhood looking to the time when fortune shall be 
attained and leisure from business shall afford a season 
for travel, and thought, and self-culture, and the 
thousand things that look so alluring in the distance. 

Waiting, all waiting. The youth and the maiden 
for love ; the poet and the artist for fame ; the politician 
for power ; the poor man for wealth; the rich man, 
perhaps ill in body and mind, praying for health ; the 



Midsummer Musings. 65 

middle aged waiting for rest, that heart rest which 
comes to so few in this life ; the old waiting for the 
reaper whose name is death. 

Waiting, all waiting for some blessing in store in the 
future, and, as the years pass, growing less and less 
hopeful of hope's fruition, until at last here is merged 
in hereafter. The short days of joy and the long days 
of sorrow, the days of hope and of fear, of doubts and 
despair, are as a tale that is told, and we arc no longer 
waiting. 



Midsummer Musings. 



''at the midsummer when the hay was down." 
l\ How many charming kaleidoscopic scenes this 
line produces. Yet fairest of all the pictures set in 
memory's golden frame is one of a summer afternoon 
a dozen years ago. On the sloping lawn sits a mother 
with a baby, her first born, on her lap, a great New- 
foundland dog at her side. The mower's work is done, 
they are loading up the hay, and baby's father, strong 
and stalwart, is mounted on the fragrant pile. Sun- 
shine and shadow are playing bo-peep together through 
the branches of the grand old elms and maples, and 
the earth is very fair and beautiful — the Garden of 
Eden could scarce have been fairer than this peaceful, 
5 



66 Midsummer Musings. 

rural home. It is midsummer again, and baby, grown 
to a tall boy, and father, both are sleeping quietly, and 
the grass and the mj'rtle whisper a gentle lullaby over 
them. The mowers are at work ; the sound of the 
scythe and of merrj'^ voices is borne in on the breeze ; 
children, baby's brothers, are tossing and tumbling the 
hay ; the sun shines as brightly, the birds carol as 
gayly, the world is as fair as a dozen years ago, but 
there's an emptiness in it, and a sense of insecurity 
and desolateness, that birds, nor flowers, nor sunshine 
can fill nor take away. 

" At tlie midsummer, when the hay was done, 

Said I, mournful, ' Though my life is in its prime, 

Bare lie my meadows, all shorn before their time ; 

Through my scorched woodlands, the leaves are turning brown. 

It is the hot midsummer, when the ha)' is down.' " 

Ah ! how our idols are shattered as the \'ears pass. 
The very evils that we prayed heaven might be 
averted have overwhelmed us ; the very trials that our 
hearts shrank from, as the quivering flesh shrinks from 
the surgeon's knife, have searched us out. The world 
is chaos, and we are groping blindh' with out-stretched 
hands to find some path through the darkness. By- 
and-by, after wcar\' months of striving, of question- 
ing, comes a "still small voice." whispering, " Peace, be 
still." 

Gradually we gather up the broken threads of life. 
Little children, strong in their helplessness, draw us 



Can the Old Love. 67 

back to neglected duties, and after a time comes res- 
ignation to the inevitable, and, if we are made of the 
right material, a development of character seldom at- 
tained in the sunshine of prosperity. We find that the 
soul of life's sweetness is "drawn out by tears." 



Can the Old love? " 



THIS is the title of a volume I have noticed in the 
book stores. I do not know the author's name, 
nor how he answers the query, but I hope affirmatively. 
It seems to me there must come to all — I mean to all 
true souls — a time in life when love is an imperative 
necessity. When the heyday of youth is past, I think 
there comes a riper love, born of something higher 
than the mere passional attraction which the girl of 
sixteen and the boy of eighteen dignify by the holy 
name of Love. 

This beautiful world of ours, overflowing with 
sources of enjoyment, is full of wretchedness, and nine- 
tenths of it is caused by the unhappy relations exist- 
ing between the sexes. Murder and suicide have be- 
come an every-day occurrence ; infanticide is of so 
little importance as to scarce provoke a comment ; and 
well may those who can find time to step outside the 
whirlpool for a moment cry: How long, oh, Lord ! 



68 Can the Old Love. 

how long can these things exist? How long can we 
go on at this fearful pace ? 

Until men and women shall be true to themselves 
and to each other — until they marry for love, not pas- 
sion, not wealth, not position, not for a handsome 
maintenance, but because their love for each other is 
so great that they cannot live apart — then I think we 
shall hear no more of free love, of faithless husbands, 
of wives seeking their affinities, of lov^ers shooting 
their mistresses, children their parents, of the soul too 
wear\'towait ''till the passion and madness of living are 
through," filling a suicide's grave, of madhouses with 
their number of inmates fearfully increasing each year. 

We are living in a fast age, in a transition age, I 
think, where all true workers ma)' find a field ; and out 
of this chaos, perhaps, in future years ma\- develop a 
beautiful order, which our children or our children's 
children may enjoy. But to return to the question, 
''Can the Old love? " I say yes. What is life worth 
if we must lay down our love with our youth ? Love 
must continue through time, through eternity. 

" When wo see the first glorv of voutli pass us hy, 

Like a leaf on the stream that will never return; 
When our cup, which had sparkled with pleasures so high, 

First tastes of the other, the dark Howiuii urn — 
Then, then is the time when afTection holds sway 

With a depth and a tenderness joy never knew; 
Love, nursed among pleasures, is faithless as they. 

But the love born of sorrow, like sorrow, is true." 



Love and Sorrow. 69 



Love and Sorrov^. 



Wliat most I prize in woman 

Is her affections, not her intellect. 

The intellect is finite ; but the aOcctions 

Are infinite, and cannot be exhausted. — Longfellow. 

"The language of all beauty, and of infinity itself, is love." 

HOW much of joy and of soitovv comes to us 
through the affections. More, far more of mis- 
ery than of happiness to the ch'nging, confiding nature 
ever making for itself idols, which after a brief period 
of blind devotion it finds, alas! too often, are made of 
a very inferior quality of clay, too sensuous and too 
selfish to understand or appreciate the wealth of love 
that is lavished on them ; often wounding almost mad- 
dening the passionate heart by a stupid misunderstand- 
ing, a cold indifference and a cruel neglect, far more 
terrible to bear than the occasional storm of a hasty 
temper, which is quickly regretted and atoned for. 

Charlotte Bronte writes : " As to intense passion, I 
am convinced that that is no desirable feeling. In the 
first place, it seldom or never meets with a requital ; 
and, in the second place, if it did, the feeling would be 
only temporary ; it would last the honeymoon, and 
then, perhaps, give place to disgust, or indifference 
worse, perhaps, than disgust. Certainly this would be 



70 Love and Sorrow. 

the case on the man's part, and on the woman's — God 
help her, if she is left to love passionately and alone." 
The love which, after long years of bitter loneliness, 
crowned the life of this gentle woman, born to sorrow, 
came late and was brief as it was happy, and her words 
must have been written from observation, rather than 
from experience. 

Madame de Stael, that great delineator of the ten- 
der passion, says: " How pitiable is the feeling, deli- 
cate woman, who commits a great imprudence for a 
man whose love she knows inferior to her own ! " 

Many a fine lad)' with little more heart than the 
marble statue standing in her drawing- room, would 
curl her haughty lip in scorn, at the bare idea of lov- 
ing any thing better than her own fair self. Yet we 
find even in this remarkable age which has developed 
that anomaly known as the "girl of the period " (whose 
fiistness and boldness in seeking the attention of the 
other sex is disgustingly apparent), hidden away in 
quiet nooks, coming little in contact with the world, 
gentle, confiding natures, all womanl)' tenderness, whose 
purest sympathies often lead them to sacrifices which 
are the source of life-long misery. 

Some writer, who has made woman his theme, has 
said : "• A chaste woman yields to the wishes of the 
man she adores, an unchaste one yields to her own." 
The generality of men, probably, have no conception 



Love and Sorrow. 71 

of the real delicacy of a true womanly nature ; her 
longing for love, her yearning for sympathy ; her 
weaker nature seeking strength and rest in one 
stronger ; her despair on finding her sweetest and 
purest emotions coarsely misinterpreted and made a 
ribald jest by lips unfit to speak the name of woman. 
There are many Corinnes in real life, but alas ! the Os- 
walds are very rare. Fate occasionally smiles propi- 
tiously on the love of such a woman and life is blissful ; 
but more likely her " grand oak," to which every 
tendril of her life is entwined, proves rotten and worth- 
less at the core, leaving the bright, sweet thing, that 
clung so closely, trailing in the dust, a mass of with- 
ered leaves and scentless, faded flowers, and henceforth 
she drags out a miserable existence of soulless, dreary 
days, and restless, moaning nights, or she becomes one 
of those unfortunates — 

" Weary of breath, 
Rashly importunate gone to her death." 

Many men possess a power called animal magnetism 
which irresistibly attracts negative or weaker natures. 
It is the unscrupulous use of this mysterious power 
which has caused many a pure and modest woman to 
suddenly electrify a horror-stricken community by step- 
ping aside from the path called virtue (a path trodden 
smooth, mainly by those half-hearted beings who are 
" good only by negation "), and henceforth she becomes 



72 Love and Sorrow. 

a pariah in society, while the object of her adoration, 
to whom she is as irresistibly attracted as the needle to 
the pole, and to whom she has given her life, is received 
with open arms by the same consistent community 
that condemns his victim. 

" Wliat I ask is justice, justice, sir ! 
Let both be punished, or both go free. 
If it be in woman a shameful thing. 
What is it in man? now, come, be just ; 
Remember, she falls through her love for him, 
He, through his selfisli lust !" 

Not long since the following paragraph appeared in 
one of our dailies : " A private member of the demi- 
monde died yesterday. This scarlet woman, with all 
her sins, had qualities of heart and mind which many 
of her whiter sisters do not possess. She was a warm- 
hearted, generous creature. It is generally said, while 
we know it to be a fact, that she was a liberal and 
anonymous contributor to the fund which kept the 
' Little Grocery ' going a year and a half ago. Many 
a poor family will miss the kind and delicate philan- 
thropy of one who, according to the world's dictum, 
was, before her physical death, ' cast away and lost.' " 

Who among us know of the causes which led this 
warm-hearted, generous woman to become one of the 
demi-monde ? Who knows of her temptation, her se- 
cret sorrow, her suffering ? Do you for a moment sup- 
pose that such a woman prefers a life of infamy to that 



What Fame means to a Woman. 73 

of an honored wife and happy mother ? Never ! Be- 
trayed perhaps by the man she loved ; disowned by 
the world ; what remained for her but to " live and die 
on the town ? " And here let me ask a question which 
many think but few dare ask : Who is the better wo- 
man — sha who gives herself, heart and life, to the 
man she loves, or the woman who sells herself, soul 
and body, to the man she despises? Priestly blessing 
sanctions the latter, and society blandly smiles and 
courts her favor, while her generous, impulsive, loving 
sister is " cast away and lost," unfit for recognition by 
her " whiter sisters." Gentle women were wont to weep 
over the wrongs and sorrows of the frail and lovely 
Frou-Frou, as depicted on the stage by the charming 
Agnes Ethel, yet should they chance to meet poor 
Frou-Frou on the street, would draw aside their skirts 
lest even the hem of their garments should be contam- 
inated by her touch. Oh, consistency, thou art a 
jewel. 



What Fame means to a Woman, 



IT means dead sea apples to parched and fevered 
lips — it means weary days of sorrow and nights 
of wrestling with a great agony that no human eye 
ever looks upon — it means " wounded feet that shrink 



74 What Fame means to a Woman. 

and bleed, but press and climb the narrow way" — it 
means empty arms reaching out vainly for the loved 
and lost — it means a dumb, tortured soul that breaks 
its bonds at last and gives utterance to something 
that moves other souls. Fame to a woman ! Did a 
happy woman ever desire Fame ? Woman asks for 
love ; it is her birthright, and when it is denied she 
takes fame as a substitute ; though it reminds one of 
the remark of the old Scotch-woman as she looked on 
Burns' monument — " Puir Rob, he askit for bread 
and they g;e him a stone ! " The true woman's life is 
in her affections, and she seldom soars far above the 
home nest if it be a happy one. Unless the gods pre- 
side at her birth she does not often become famous, 
except through some soul torture to which the rack 
and the thumb-screw would be light in comparison. It 
is shutting the bird in the dark to teach it to sing, the 
song comes at last, clear and sweet, and penetrating, a 
very abandon of song, that seems to mock at its own 
misery, but it comes through the gloom and anguish 
of imprisonment. Famous women — God pity them ! 



• H 



Jottings on a Hot Afternoon. 75 



Jottings on a Hot Afternoon. 

OW hot it is? Oh, for a mountain breeze, or a 
whiff of sea air, or a cooling shower, or any 
thing in fact to bring the thermometer to its senses 
once more. I wonder if any of my readers have 
friends who Hve on a farm where they go every sum- 
mer to rusticate. Happy readers if they have. 

All through this hot season I have been haunted by 
a vision of an old-fashioned farm-house — not a villa, a 
little out of town, but a real old farm-house away off 
in the country, with a big garret where one can hide 
away on a rainy day with a good book and read, and 
dream dreams that will never be realized, and listen to 
the rain pattering on the roof ; and a nice cool cellar, 
the shelves filled with pans of milk with cream on it ; 
such cream — not the kind the milkman brings — and 
a great roomy kitchen that never gets hot, no mat- 
ter how warm the day, because they keep the 
stove shut up somewhere in a shed, and have a great 
oven somewhere else where the baking is done, and 
right near the door is a well — a real well with a high 
curb and an " old oaken bucket " (not a pump) ; then 
up near the orchard there is an ice-house. Ah ! how 
well I remember such a place! where a dear old auntie 



76 Compensation. 

used to welcome me with tears of joy, when I came, 
and shed tears of real sorrow when my visit ended, 
and crammed my trunk with things which she knew I 
could nfever get in the city, and last of all gather me a 
bouquet of marigolds, poppies, and other brilliant-hued 
and fragrant flowers, which I was naughty enough to 
drop from the window as soon as the cars had whirled 
me out of sight of the eyes watching for my last 
wave. 

Dear old auntie, whose eyes will never watch my 
coming and going again, unless with other loved ones 
gone before, they are looking for my entrance to that 
country where I hope to find a more perfect rest and 
peace than even my visits to the old farm-house could 
impart. 



Compensation. 



UNLESS there be a law of compensation some- 
where in this world or the next, it would seem 
that life to many is but a sad failure ; and the question 
so often asked by good men and women, whose lives 
are passed in one long, weary struggle for the bare 
means of existence — " Why does vice flourish and sit 
in high places, while virtue, honesty and true worth 
drag miserably through the world unnoticed and unap- 



Compensation. ']'] 

preciated ? " is still unanswered. Why is the fashion- 
able lady, too delicate to rise to breakfast in the morn- 
ing, too tenderly nurtured to bear a rude breath of air, 
whose dainty feet seldom touch the earth, except in 
stepping across the pavement to her luxurious carriage, 
better than the seamstress who toils until midnight, 
with bloodshot eyes and tired hands, over the elegant 
robe which is to adorn the lady of fashion ? her equal, 
perhaps her superior in grace and refinement, with 
delicate tastes and longings for the beautiful all cruci- 
fied — noble aspirations bound to earth by weary 
drudgery. Why does the honest, industrious merchant 
or mechanic see all his efforts to win a position for 
himself and family prove unavailing, while the unprin- 
cipled but successful gambler or speculator in one day 
realizes a fortune that insures him a life of ease and 
luxury, and the respect of society ? 

Why is the libertine, who rides in his carriage, 
clothed in purple and fine linen, received with open 
arms by the society who brand his heart-broken victim 
with the " scarlet letter," that no tears of anguish can 
ever efface ? Why are little children born to a herit- 
age of poverty and suffering, while within a stone's 
throw the heir of the rich man grows sick with a sur- 
feit of the food for which the others are dying? 

The problem remains unsolved ; but I sometimes think 
that on the other side that thin but impenetrable vail, 



78 A Day at Luzerne. 

which separates the earth from the spirit-life, many of 
those who sit in high places here shall find themselves 
far, far below the ones they once treated with cold 
indifference or cruel neglect. " For he that exalteth 
himself shall be humbled, but he that humbleth him- 
self shall be exalted." 



A Day at Luzerne. 



H 



AVING had for some weeks an unconquerable 
longing to seek a " lodge in some vast wilder- 
ness," and having read certain glowing accounts of 
life among the Adirondacks, we packed our trunks 
and started one fine day for that region. Changing 
cars at Troy, after being crowded, squeezed, jammed 
and nearly annihilated, we found ourselves seated in 
the train for Saratoga ; and {en passant), should this 
letter by any chance meet the eye of the gallant gen- 
tleman (?) at Troy who made a path for himself 
through the crowd by thrusting aside with his cane 
ladies and children, will he please call to mind these 
lines : 

" Oh ! wad some power the giftie gie us 
To see oursel's as ithers see us," etc. 

With a contemptuous pity for the crowd of fashion- 
ables who left us at the Springs, and hearts swelling 



A Day at Luzerne. 79 

with a sense of the sublimity which was soon to burst 
upon our vision, we took seats in the Adirondack train 
en route for North Creek. Passing now a quiet vil- 
lage, with a half envious longing for the peaceful, rest- 
ful life of its inhabitants, and now a country church- 
yard, with its simple marble slabs gleaming through 
drooping branches, telling the old tale of parting and 
sorrow ; grand old hills are around us, and the river 
gradually grows less, until the noble Hudson, which 
floats boats like palaces down to the ocean, becomes a 
shallow stream across which a child can wade. Our 
passengers gradually dwindle away, the greater por- 
tion stopping at Hadley for Luzerne, and at Thurman 
for Lake George, until there are but a half dozen of 

us left. And now 

" The day is closing cool, 

The woods are dim before us. 
The white fog of the way-side pool 

Is creeping slowly o'er us." 

As we reach North Creek, the terminus of the road, 
and an unattractive village, whose principal feature is 
a saw-mill, situated just in front of our hotel, the scen- 
ery appears to be left behind us, or is still farther on. 
We are told of places to visit some fifteen or twenty 
miles farther into the woods, by stage, and the next 
morning a New York artist with two ladies take their 
departure in a drizzling rain, in an open wagon, for a 
place fifteen miles distant, where a log hut has ere this 



8o A Day at Luzerne. 

opened its hospitable doors to receive them. Certain 
small boys of our party had come to fish, and in spite 
of rain and chilly weather must sally forth. Sum- 
moned by the tea bell, it was found that rolling logs 
into the water had been voted more exciting sport 
than fishing, and when they were found to be soaked 
to the waist the excitement waxed stronger. We had 
left home for an indefinite period, for days, or weeks, 
" It may be for years, it may be forever; " it proved 
to be days. The next morning found us seated in the 
cars with tickets and baggage checked for Saratoga. 
(We are on the "marrow bones of our soul" to the 
fashionables we left there.) 

, Approaching Hadley, we suddenly decided to stop 
until the afternoon train, at Luzerne, and a happy 
inspiration it proved to be. Taking the " Wayside " 
omnibus we rode through the prettiest, most romantic 
little village that it has ever been our good fortune to 
visit, and were set down at the hospitable doors of the 
Wayside Hotel. After duly registering our names 
and being shown into a pleasant room, we soon wended 
our way down to the lake, where a number of pretty 
little boats were moored, and several skimming over 
the placid water, most of them rowed by ladies. Not 
finding any one at liberty to row us, we took a charm- 
ing walk through a path in the wood surrounding the 
lake, where meeting a brown faced country lad with a 



A Day at Luzerne. 8i 

basket of pond lilies we found he did not need much 
urging to enter our service, and running home with his 
basket soon met us at the landing, where, seating our- 
selves in a boat, we were rowed over the clear waters 
of the sweetest little lake that ever mirrored the green 
hills and blue skies, our young oarsman showing us all 
the points of interest. Here they gathered chestnuts 
in the autumn, and we could imagine what the glory 
of autumn must be in such a locality ; there the pond 
lilies grew ; here the white and there the yellow, and 
then such skating in winter ! and the boy's eyes grew 
bright at the thought. Then we must take a run up 
to the summer house on the hill before dinner, and 
when we got there we wanted to stay all day, and see 
the sun go down and the moon rise. 

Encircled by glorious hills in a little hollow, the 
lake rests peacefully. A few feet from it is the hotel, 
a large ample building in the Swiss style, surrounded 
by some acres of ground tastefully laid out, with here 
and there at convenient distance a pretty cottage in 
the same style for the accommodation of guests. We 
return to the hotel, and after an excellent dinner, walk 
out on the broad piazza to enjoy a last view of this 
enchanting spot. We are pleasantly entertained a half 
hour by the kind and attentive proprietor, and a lady 
guest, when we say good-bye, thinking that 
6 



82 Amusement for the Boys. 

"None shall more regretful leave 
These waters and these hills than I ; 
Or distant, fonder dream how eve 
Or dawn is painting wave and sk)'." 

And wc would say to all pleasure seekers, or to the 
weary seeking rest, go to Luzerne, for it is the 
synonym of repose. 

" Lake of the Northland ! keep thy dower 
Of beauty still, and while above 
Thy solemn mountains speak of power. 
Be thou the mirror of God's love." 



Amusement for the Boys. 



I OFTEN think that city boys, even those whose 
parents are in comfortable, or even affluent circum- 
. stances, have a hard time of it. There seem to be so 
few sources of safe and lawful amusement for boys 
in cities. We have beautiful parks to be sure for them 
to walk in, but a live boy does not want to walk, cer- 
tainly not long at a time, he wants to run, and leap, 
and jump, and turn summersaults; the park will do for 
the girls, but the boys can't do any thing there, and 
indeed, they can't do much anywhere within the city 
limits. If they stop on the corner to swop jack-knives 
or spin a top, the majestic form of a policeman looms 
up and orders them to " move on." If they find a 
vacant lot and commence a game of ball, an ubiqui- 



Amusement for the Boys. 83 

tous gentleman with brass buttons appears, and again 
orders them to " move on," until we are fain to recall 
the words of Mr. Snagsby: "Well! really, constable, 
you know, really that does seem a question — where, 
you know ? " 

" If we went ten miles out of the city to play ball, I 
b'lieve we'd find a ' cop ' there," was the indignant 
exclamation of one of a tired and heated trio of 
boys returning from a long and evidently fruitless 
tramp one hot day in midsummer. 

Now, I would have ball grounds in every city ; I 
would have bowling alleys where boys could play at a 
trifling expense ; I would have skating rinks, and above 
all, I would have swimming schools. Oh, terror of 
mothers, that learning to swim ! How often we are 
shocked by that terrible word, " Drowned ! " Think 
of the awful terror and struggle of a young soul as 
the pitiless waves sweep it forever away from home 
and friends, and all the bright visions of youth, and yet 
the boys will learn to swim, even at the risk of life, 
and mothers will sit at home in half breathless sus- 
pense, wondering if their restless little lads have been 
tempted to the river. 

Boys must and will have recreation out of school 
hours, it is right they should, and it rests with us 
whether it shall be safe and innocent and lawful plea- 
sure, or whether they seek it in dangerous, under- 
handed and unlawful ways. 



84 - Our Homes. 



Our Homes. 



HOW mucli has been written of Home, yet the 
subject is never worn threadbare. Home and 
love ! Old as the creation, yet like the landscape 
before us, ever new, ever beautiful ; the mere word fills 
one with tender, loving thoughts — 

" Home's not merely four square walls, 
Though with pictures hung and gilded," 

It is, or should be, a place filled with peace and rest, 
and love, a refuge from the cares and coldness and 
deceit of the world, a haven of rest, an oasis in the 
desert, where soul and body are strengthened and 
refreshed when weary and worn with the struggle of 
life — a place where no rigid rules are enforced, and 
each inmate feels on entering that an atmosphere of 
blessed freedom prevails ; where no strict boundary 
line exists between ^rown people and children, but 
where young and old mingle together in sweet and 
familiar intercourse ; where the blessed Day of Rest is 
looked forward to as a season of physical and mental 
relaxation, and not dreaded as an interval of dull and 
stupid inertness, or made intolerable by an undue 
strictness and regard to the letter rather than the spirit 
of religion. 



Our Homes. 85 

We make our homes ; and how many of us make 
them what tliey should be ? How many of us do 
our whole duty as husbands, wives, parents ? 1 low 
many of us use aright the unlimited authority we 
have over our own children! — overlooking at one 
time a fault which at another we condemn with a 
hasty and harsh reproof, and which we may perhaps 
recall with unavailing regret through long, bitter years, 
when the grass shall be waving between the dear face 
of our darling and our own. 

The houses we live in are not always homes, no 
matter how crowded with elegant furniture, works of 
art and luxury ; the simplest cottage, with its vine- 
draped window, its little parlor covered with a straw 
matting, its round table and chintz covered lounge, its 
shelf of books and stand of flowerS; may contain more 
of the elements of a true home than the abode of 
luxury — 

" A world of care without ; 
A world of strife shut out ; 
A world of love shut in." 

This is home. 



86 Our Dead Darling. 



Our Dead Darling. 



" Look upon us, angels of young children, with regards not quite 
estranged, when the swift river bears us to the ocean." 

N' EARLY two years have passed since my darling 
left me, and this morning T have been dusting 
and arranging his books that lie on the bracket, in the 
corner of my room. They have lain there so many 
years ; some of them since he was a baby. 

How strange it seems that he should be gone, and 
these perishable things, that once gave him pleasure, 
should lie here still, the marks of his pencil on many 
of them, his name here and there in the first scrawl of 
a school-boy. 

The same carpets are on the floors trodden by his 
feet, the same furniture in the rooms, the lounge where 
he has so often thrown himself when weary with play 
— his desk on the table filled with all manner of treas- 
ures, precious in the eyes of a little boy, and, oh ! so 
precious to me now. Even the old dog, his faithful 
companion and playfellow, lies in his accustomed place, 
asleep with his head on his paws. 

Nothing changed outwardly, yet that greatest of 
changes has quietly passed over all. Death, with icy 
fingers, has touched the bright eyes, stolen the bloom 



Our Dead Darling. 87 

from the round cheeks, the smile from the sweet Hps. 
The busy hands so eager in launching the tiny boat, in 
throwing the ball, or in some little work about garden 
and house, the quick feet bounding up the stairs, the 
bright face flashing in like a ray of sunlight, with some 
request, perhaps not always granted as readily as might 
have been — all are quiet. 

Ah ! if we could only know how soon we may have 
cause to regret some hastily spoken word — how soon 
our children are to become angels, and leave us with a 
pain in our hearts, deepened by the remembrance of 
some word or act which we would give worlds to re- 
call ! All is but a memory now ; and I often wonder 
whether all the joys of a " golden eternity " can efface 
from our minds the agony of that bright, cool morn- 
ing in the early autumn, when our darling whispering 
" Mamma," with his last breath, went from our home 
forever. 

Yes, our "big boy," our first born, more precious to 
us than all the treasures of earth, is gone. Life can 
never be quite the same to us ; and were the question 
asked : " What's the best thing in the world ? " we 
should answer : " Something out of it, I think." 

I called at the house of a friend the other day, and 
found it more than usually bright and cheerful, with 
the return of her eldest son to spend vacation, and a 
terrible, unconquerable longing possessed me for mine 



88 Farewell. 

to come home. But he has gone to a school where 
there are no vacations, no glad coming home to get 
ready for the next term ; and I can only await, like many 
another tired soul, the time when I too shall be borne 
over the " swift river ; " and I think that — 

" One of the joys of our heaven shall be 
The little boy that died." 



Fare^A^ell. 



" A word that hath been and must be, 
A sound that makes us linger — yet farewell! " 

THE fiat has gone forth ! Fate has decreed that 
our lines are to be cast in strange places, and the 
places that once knew us shall know us no more. 

For months we have been striving to familiarize our- 
selves with the thought of change. While shut in by 
winter's " tumultuous privacy," we felt secure, and the 
cloud on our horizon was a mere speck in the distance 
— but lo ! the spring clays are upon us, and we can no 
longer close our eyes dreamily in the early dawn and 
sigh, as oppressive thoughts intrude upon our matu- 
tinal nap. 

" Let the morrow take care of the morrow, 
Leave things of the future to fate — " 



Farewell. 89 

Alas and alas ! the old home is beginning to have a 
strange look, like the change on the face of a dear 
friend who is passing forever away from our clinging 
embrace. We wander aimlessly from room to room 
recalling visions of the past. In this one is gathered 
again a circle of friends and kinsfolk around the hos- 
pitable board ; no chair is vacant, lost faces have come 
back, voices that have long been silent speak again, 
forms that we have missed " enter at the open door," 
and smilingly join the festival." We open another door. 
It is Christmas eve, cold and stormy without, brilliant 
within, with fire and light and radiant faces, and the 
stately hemlock, fresh and fragrant from the neighbor- 
ing wood, bravely bears its unaccustomed burden, and 
showers its precious fruit upon the happy group be- 
neath, while " mirth and music sound the dirge of 
care." 

In this chamber immortal souls have been ushered 
into life. From this, beloved and beautiful forms have 
been carried forth, leaving us to grope in a world of 
shadows. One by one our household gods are re- 
moved, and at last the bare walls return our yearning 
gaze with a vacant stare. The ashes of home drop 
from our lingering feet. " Its echoes of love and their 
answers of peace " shall awaken no more. Its doors 
close upon us for the last time. Its gates shut us out 
from the old life forever. 



90 



The Little Outcast. 



The Little Outcast. 



" Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones ; for I say 
unto you that in Heaven their angels do always behold the face of my 
Father." 

CHRISTMAS Eve had come again, and happy little 
faces were at the windows, and bright eyes were 
peering anxiously out into the twilight, waiting for the 
deeper shades of evening ; for beautiful Christmas 
trees, glittering with bon-bons and laden with rare and 
wonderful gifts, were shut up in back parlors and li- 
braries, and mysterious packages had been arriving all 
day and had been carefully deposited in the closed 
rooms, while the children were kept in the nursery, 
with the promise of a visit from good old Santa Claus 
in the evening. 

The streets were thronged with lively, busy people. 
Papas were hastening home with arms and pockets 
overflowing with bundles ; errand boys were running 
to and fro ; sleighs were dashing along with sounds of 
bells and merry voices vibrating on the frosty air. 
Mirth and music, laughter and song, proclaimed that 
Christmas, dear Christmas, bountiful, generous, kind 
old Christmas, was about to pay the world his annual 
visit. 

But were there only happy hearts in the great city 



The Little Outcast. 91 

on this blessed Christmas eve ! Ah, no ; the bright 
moon and the brilliant stars looked 'down on many 
wretched homes, where little children had not even ■ 
bread to satisfy their hunger, nor fire to keep them 
warm ; and it was not to be a Merry Christmas to 
them, but just like the other days, with their pinching 
poverty, in their poor homes. 

Slowly wending his way through the gas-lit streets 
was a little boy not more than eight years old. Only 
a few tattered garments covered his little, shivering 
limbs ; his face was pale and thin, and his great blue 
eyes had a weary, pleading look. But people were too 
happy or too busy to give a thought to the little rag- 
ged boy, who sometimes asked a penny of the passer- 
by or stopped at a basement door to beg for food. 
But cook too intent upon her ices and jellies to listen 
to beggars, rudely thrusts him out, and so the little 
fellow wandered on, standing sometimes for a moment 
to gaze in a window where the curtain had been left 
aside, to look at the beautifully-dressed children, and 
the scene in the richly-furnished room seemed to the 
little outcast like a glimpse into fairy land. And 
wondering why he was shut from all this happiness, 
with a sigh that was half a sob, he wandered on again, 
for nobody missed him. 

He was an orphan, and was sent out every morning 
to beg for the food which kept him from starving. On 



92 The Little Outcast. 

and on he went slowly and more slowly, feeling faint 
and hungry, and'tired. Presently he came to a quiet 
street where the stores were all closed, and creeping 
in behind a great box, he laid down on the cold walk ; 
but it seemed so nice to rest he did not mind the cold 
any more, and soon he fell asleep and dreamed — such 
a happy dream. He was lying on his own little white- 
draped bed in the cottage that had once been his 
home. The fragrance of the June roses which clam- 
bered over the windows was wafted in by the soft sum- 
mer breeze. He heard music — such heavenly music, 
and his dear mother, who had died, glided softly in 
and took her tired little boy in her arms and kissed 
him and rocked him to sleep, just as he had remem- 
bered she had done when he was a very little child. 

The night grew bitter cold, sleigh riders and foot 
travelers were safely and snugly at home ; the lights 
on the Christmas trees had burned down, parlors were 
darkened, happy hearts were wrapped in happy dreams, 
and wretched ones for a few brief hours forgot their 
wretchedness. Only the moon and stars peeped in 
behind the box where lay the little, cold, white face 
with its radiant smile. 

Christmas morning dawned cold and clear. The 
bells were ringing merrily, merrily, " Merry Christ- 
mas," " Merry Christmas." The children shouted- it, 
the bells caught up the sound which echoed and re- 



About Babies. 93 

echoed on the frosty air. Happy-looking parents, and 
rosy, bright-faced children are on their way to church 
to spend an hour, and then home again to feasting 
and merriment. 

But what is this coming? something borne on a lit- 
ter, with a troop of boys on either side. What can it 
be? Oh, only a little beggar, found frozen on the 
street this morning. The mirthful voices are hushed 
for a moment, and the kind little hearts are sorry they 
could not have done something for the little beggar 
boy, but it is too late, and he is soon forgotten in the 
sumptuous dinner and the merry games that fill the 
short afternoon brim-full of fun and happiness. 

Little despised, neglected outcast of yesterday? 

Angel to-day? Who can tell how far the joys of your 

. Christmas exceed those of the most petted child of 

luxury, for " I say unto you, that in Heaven their 

angels do always behold the face of my father." 



About Babies. 



''q^HI 



^HE Neiv York Weekly believes in babies." 

;'m very glad to hear it, Mr. Editor. I wouldn't 
give much for the man that doesn't, and still less for 
the woman. But so few people do believe in babies 
nowadays. What is there sweeter in the world than a 



94 About Babies. 

plump, good-natured baby, with its groat, round eyes 
looking wonderingly around its little world, trying to 
fathom the mystery of all the strange things it sees ? 
The box of geraniums nodding at him away over in 
the window — a long mile it must appear to the little 
bobbing head ; the chandelier, like a great sun up in 
the ceiling ; the pretty, bright fire in the grate, where 
mamma warms the little toes sometimes ; the book- 
case, the lounge, the curtains, the table — all are 
objects of speculation to the little brain. And finally, 
with a long, tired breath, home comes the little trav- 
eler from his tour of investigation to mother's eyes, 
when the satisfied " coo " tells of the world of love he 
recognizes there. 

"A babe in a house is a well-spring of pleasure." 
Mow the little brothers and sisters, when the advent 
of a new bab\^ is announced, come filing in, half shy, 
half pleased, to take a peep at the new-comer ; how 
they admire the little red face, the tiny soft hands, the 
wee, round mouth, and above all, the wondertul little 
feet, which nurse unwraps from the soft flannels to 
show them. If they could only stay with mamma and 
that little baby ; but they are marched quietly out 
again by the solemn-looking nurse (why must nurses 
look solemn ?) to wonder and wait for another peep. 

1 don't believe in the man or the woman who don't 
believe in babies, and I am often astonished and indig- 



About Babies. 95 

nant at the treatment I see the Httle ones receive from 
their own parents. How they are snubbed, cuffed, 
scolded, sent to bed, locked up, when, if justice were 
done, in many cases, the elders instead of the children 
would receive the punishment. I verily believe there's 
many an old bachelor and spinster, in spite of the 
slurs thrown at them, who would treat the children 
more kindly than half the parents, for all bachelors 
are not "crusty," nor is the milk of human love turned 
sour in the breasts of all old maids. 

Apropos of bachelors, just now I remember a young 
mother in a state of blissful beatitude with her first 
baby, and a bachelor brother (who is a husband and 
father now) trying to calm her ecstasies with the pre- 
diction that it would never have any hair. Then, 
when the soft down began to appear and lengthen into 
little sunny rings, a wise and solemn prophecy was 
announced that he would never walk. And when the 
little feet began to patter about the house as soft as 
summer rain drops, the fiat went forth that he would 
never talk. But the time came when the lisping voice 
made music sweeter to the mother's ears than the 
summer rain, or the song of birds, or the whispering 
of the wind through the pine grove by the nursery 
window, or any thing this side of Heaven. 

But I am forgetting what I meant to tell you. Well, 
one day, when that mother stood peeping through a 



96 About Babies 

crack in the door of the room where the august uncle 
and httle nephew had been left together a moment, 
the uncle was tossing and kissing the little fellow as 
naturally as his own father could have done it ; and 
when niamnia announced her approach by a half-sup- 
pressed giggle, the baby was dropped, the newspaper 
resumed, and every thing found in an austere and 
proper manner. 

Bachelors are afraid of being laughed at, but, 
really away down in the bottom of their hearts, 
I believe half of them like babies just as well as you 
or I do, and would be fathers this blessed day if there 
weren't so many silly women in the world, who don't 
know enough to make good wives and mothers. 

But we'll drop the bachelors and come back to the 
babies. And I repeat there's nothing half so sweet 
and cunning, and pretty, and lovable, and altogether 
satisfactory in the world, as a healthy, good-natured 
baby ; and if anybody thinks differently — well, they 
have a right to their opinion, I suppose. 



Tact. 97 



Tact. 

TACT may be defined to be that true courtesy and 
politeness which springs involuntarily from a re- 
fined and gentle nature. A sort of sixth sense, as 
quick to detect the feelings of others as the touch of 
the blind to discover that which the eyes cannot see. 
Dickens gives us a beautiful illustration of this deli- 
cate faculty in Bleak House, where dear little " Dame 
Durden " in one of her village rambles, says: " I hap- 
pened to stroll into the -little church when a marriage 
was just concluded, and the young couple had to sign 
the register. The bridegroom, to whom the pen was 
handed first, made a rude cross for his mark ; the bride, 
who came next, did the same. Now, I had known the 
bride when I was last there, not only as the prettiest 
girl in the place, but as having quite distinguished her- 
self in the school ; and I could not help looking at her 
with some surprise. She came aside and whispered to 
me, while tears of honest love and admiration stood in 
her bright eyes, ' He's a dear, good fellow, Miss ; but he 
can't write, yet — he's going to learn of me — and I 
would n't shame him for the world ! ' " Could one of 
our young ladies who are taught etiquette at Madame 
Beausham's finishing academy furnish an example of 
7 



98 Tact. 

truer and more worhanly delicacy and nobility of soul ? 
Tact shows itself in a thousand ways, fills up the awk- 
ward pauses at a formal dinner party, seeks out the 
neglected and unnoticed at the evening assembly, 
showing them little attentions which cause the vain, ill- 
bred beauty and belle to stare and simper. Tact en- 
courages the young, listens with cieference and respect 
to the old, although they may sometimes be a little 
garrulous; passes ([uietly any little breach of estab- 
lished rules by those unaccustomed to mingle in soci- 
et)'. Tact never wounds us, never sends the blood in 
an indignant tingle to our finger tips by some ill-timed, 
brusque remark or action, that leaves a sting long after 
it has passed from the shallow mind that perpetrated 
it. One may lack wealth, talent, beaut\', but tact will 
make them friends among all sensible, refined people. 
It never forgets itself, it is never off its guard, it is 
innate. 

Many young misses who are passing through a course 
of fashii)nable education may enter a room with more 
assurance, may bow and extend their slender fingers 
with a well-bred nonchalencc, may sweep with flowing 
robes gracefully through the mazes of the latest dance, 
and recline with languitl ease upon the sofa ; may lis- 
ten to a giori(Tus opera or look upon a sublime land- 
scape without one expression of genuine delight, but I 
would gladly exchange all their silly airs and graces 



A True Story of a Haunted House. 



99 



for the sincere, friendly hand-pressure of some dear, 
unfashionable old friend, for the unstudied dignity and 
grace of a true, warm-hearted woman, for the fresh, 
earnest enthusiasm of a young girl educated under the 
supervision of a sensible, loving mother. Let us in- 
stil into the minds of our daughters some of those 
virtues which their grandmothers possessed, and I do 
not doubt but their manners will be pleasing and agree- 
able, although they cannot all receive the advantages 
of Madame Beausham's finishing school for young 
ladies. 



A True Story of a Haunted House, 



A STATELY old brick mansion, surrounded by an 
acre or two of garden and lawn, in the suburbs 
of a large city, with the reputation of being haunted 
clinging to it since the earliest recollection of the oldest 
inhabitant, but wherefore none could tell. Every old 
gossip in the neighborhood had a different tale, yet 
none would declare positively to having seen the 
ghost ; but each had a friend or relative, who had a 
friend or relative, who had at some remote period in 
the history of the old house, heard or seen some un- 
accountable noise or apparition. But the people most 
interested only smiled at the ghostly rumors, and lit- 



loo A True Story of a Haunted House. 

tic children were born, and t^revv, and thrived, and 
frolicked merrily in the large, old-fashioned rooms, and 
romped and played in the garden in spite of ghost and 
goblin. But one day came the denouement — the 
ghost actually made its appearance, and it happened 
in this manner. 

It was the Fourth of July, that day so delighted in 
by the little people, and papa having been absent from 
home several days, and not expected until the morrow, 
mamma had bought the usual supply of crackers and 
other combustible material for celebrating the day in 
the noisiest manner possible. Then having promised 
to take the children to the house of a friend in the 
city, to see the procession pass, and also giving the 
servant a few hours' leave ot absence, the doors were 
locked, and taking a car, mamma and children were 
soon at the house of their friend. Now, it chanced 
that papa returned unexpectedly soon after, bringing 

with him Aunt M , and finding the doors fastened 

and the family gone, he unceremoniously burst open 
the kitchen door and walked up to the sitting-room, 
where, leaving Aunt M^ — , he proceeded to the city 
in search of his family. 

It being a warm day. Aunt M soon cionned a 

white wrapper, and feeling tired after her journey, 
threw a handkerchief over her head and fell asleep. 
Soon after Biddy, the servant, returning, was surprised 



A True Story of a Haunted House, ioi 

and alarmed at finding doors and windows open, and 
started at once on a tour of investigation. Arriving 
at the sitting-room — behold! the white-robed figure 
seated quietly in an arm-chair. 

" Howly Mother ! The ghost ! The ghost ! " and 
away rushed Biddy to the nearest neighbor for help, 
where, telling her tale, two of the sterner sex volun- 
teered to " lay tlie ghost." 

Biddy accompanied them as far as the door, but* 
could not by any persuasion be induced to enter the 
house. So these good neighbors with somewhat pal- 
lid faces, mounted the stairs, and greatly to Aunt 
M 's astonishment, demanded her name and busi- 
ness in the house. After many explanations, they 
departed, only half satisfied as to the veracity of her 
story ; but poor, frigfitened Biddy waited out doors 
until the return of the family, when the peels of laugh- 
ter which greeted her account of the ghostly visitor 
finally dispelled her fears. Yet, during the whole of 

Aunt M 's visit, she kept a safe distance, evidently 

still regarding her as some uncanny or supernatural 
being. And so our ghost, like all ghosts, proved to be 
only the creation of an excited imagination. 



I02 Cannot Afford It. 



Cannot Afford It 



HOW few of us have the moral courage to make 
the above assertion, often making miserable, 
flimsy excuses for what we do or for what we leave 
undone rather than come out boldly with the truth — 
" I cannot afford it." Running in debt for things 
which we can easily dispense with ; worrying and fret- 
ting to keep up an appearance of wealth which' we do 
not possess ; driving husbands and fathers to despera- 
tion to keep up a style of living equal to that of some 
acquaintance who has ten times our means. 

And why, let me ask, should we feel any shame in 
regard to the amount of our income, so that we are 
honest enough to live within it ? Gail Hamilton writes : 
" Blessed be poverty, and failure, and calmness, and 
silence." Blessed, indeed, be poverty, and silence, and 
dignity, compared with the loud and vulgar ostenta- 
tion of that class so appropriately known by the name 
of Veneering. And how quickly a person of sense 
will detect the difference between the sham and the 
real. In the house of Veneering we see a profusion of 
gilding, mirrors, upholstery, pictures selected for their 
fine frames, china and silver, crowded together with 
very little regard to their real uses or harmony so that 



Cannot Afford It. 103 

they are expensive, and are recommended by dealers 
as the latest and most recherche style. 

We see pretentious manners in company ; obsequi- 
ousness, fawning and flattery to those whose society it 
is desirable to court ; lavish expenditure and liberality 
where it tells, and meanness and pinching where it 
does not ; contempt and insult to those who walk in 
the garb of poverty ; wrangling and bickering in the 
famil)^ circle ; orders to servants given in a rude, au- 
thoritative tone, and the thousand things, both great 
and small, that show through the polished veneering a 
soul of the cheapest and roughest pine. 

I sometimes recall with a smile the boast of a little 
boy to his playmates that his mother's teeth were all 
filled with gold, and I am frequently quite as much 
amused with the boasting, and bombast, and preten- 
sion of children of a larger growth, who are more pitia- 
bl}' ludicrous than the little ones. Could such people 
but realize the fact, that the true lady, the true gen- 
tleman, is in all places, to all people, under all circum- 
stances, gentle, courteous, just and generous, they 
might feel inclined to strip off that outer semblance of 
gentility, which is only the cloak to vulgarity, and begin 
the work in earnest of polishing and beautifying the 
real wood, which, though it be only of pine, bright, 
and smooth, and clear, will at least have the merit of 
appearing in its true color. " Since the war," we often 



I04 Cannot Afford It. 

hear, " things are so different," and doubtless they are. 
More shoddy in cloth and in societ}\ It is a good 
thing to bear adversity with equanimity; it is a better 
thing to bear prosperity without elation. And it is 
only a person of real moral worth who can bear either 
philosophically. 

Madame Pfeiffer approaching home after her jour- 
ney around the world speaks of the necessity of chang- 
ing her traveling dress as she was now in a civilized 
country where people were judged of by their clothes. 
It would seem somewhat of a satire upon civilization 
and yet in the main the assertion is a true one. We 
are judged by superficial brains very much by the 
clothes we wear. And it is a very pleasant thing to 
wear nice clothes made in the prevailing style, without 
going to the extreme of any fashion which may be- 
come ridiculous. But look at one of our ultra-fashion- 
able ladies dressed for her round of calls. A three 
thousand dollar camel's hair shawl wraps her delicate 
frame from the chill air, a seventy-five dollar bonnet 
is perched on the extreme top of her thirty dollar 
chignon, a five hundred dollar dress sweeps the pave- 
ment as she languidly walks from her door to her car- 
riage, five thousand dollars' worth of dieimonds adorn 
her neck, ears and hands, a forty dollar mouchoir swings 
daintily from its jeweled ring ; she toils not, yet Solomon 
in all his glory was a mere farthing candle in comparison 



Midnight. 105 

to this bunierc dugaz. Is it any marvel that she awakes 
some fine morning to find her husband branded bankrupt 
and suicide ? Better say " I cannot afford it," and if the 
butterflies of fashion soar away from you, why — let them 
soar, they will perhaps alight by and by in a very miry 
spot with wings torn and soiled and drooping, while you 
will sit and sing in some safe little nest rocked by the 
breeze, with the blue sky above you and the green earth 
beneath you, thanking God that you had the moral 
courage to live your own life in your own way despite 
the demands of that despot whose name is — Society. 



Midnight. 

THE earth is cold and dim beneath the wintry sky. 
In the quiet village streets the lights are extin- 
guished, save here and there a flickering ray falls 
through the half-closed blinds of a sick-chamber, show- 
ing the figure of some anxious watcher gliding to and 
fro. Or perhaps in some dimly-lighted room the 
Death Angel has just entered, and gentle hands are 
busily robing the silent form for its last sleep, while 
through the house a wail of sorrow breaks the stillness 
of the night, and is borne upward through the dark- 
ness to the Ever Compassionate, who sends Death's 
twin-sister, Sleep, with balm for the sorrow-stricken 
hearts. 



io6 Midnight. 

Here tlie feeble cry of a new-born babe sends a throb 
of joyful thanksgiving through the household ; and here 
a happy bride, her fair head pillowed on her husband's 
breast, lies sleeping with a smile upon her lips, no care 
nor sorrow, no anxious forebodings of the trials that 
are lying in wait in the years that are to come, cast a 
shadow over the sunny face, and waking or sleeping, 
life seems but a happy dream. Here, in the solitude 
of her chamber, a widow weeps for the love that has 
gone out of her life, leaving it as cold and dark as the 
night, while the soft breathing of her fatherless ones 
is mingled with her sobs. And here the toil-worn man 
lies wrapped in dreamless sleep. Old age, middle age, 
youth and infancy, all are slumbering. Care and sor- 
row, hope, fear, despair, love, pain and passion, all 
forgotten for a few brief hours. Every burden is laid 
down. The prisoner dreams of freedom, the absent 
of home, the sorrowing of some vanished joy, and so 
the night wears on. 

In the large cities vice and crime stalk abroad under 
cover of the darkness. Theatres, concert halls and 
opera houses are pouring forth a tide of human life ; 
the gay belle and her devoted cavalier, husbands and 
wives, friends and acquaintances ; a Bohemian party of 
artists, authors and musicians, going to see the old 
year out in some gay saloon, where wine and wit shall 
flash, and sparkle, and effervesce together ; and ming- 



Foreign Missions. 107 

ling with the crowd are pickpockets, gambleis, frail, 
erring women and vile, unprincipled men, each soul 
going on its way alone, absolutely alone, for though 
heart may respond to heart, and friends and lovers, 
husJDands and wives, may be united by strong bonds of 
love and sympathy, yet, wakening suddenly, or sitting 
alone in the last solemn hour of the night, there is a 
sense of utter loneliness, dimly felt, even by the young 
bride, with head pillowed on her husband's breast. 

The clock strikes twelve ! The rumble and the roar 
gradually cease, and for a few short hours, darkness 
with brooding wings, wooes the great city to repose. 



Foreign Missions. 



^'t^OREIGN missions," indeed! I never hear the 
J/ words but a vision of Mrs. Jellyby rises before 
me, sitting in her untidy dress and littered room, dic- 
tating to poor, tired, slovenly Cady, who writes with 
frowning brow and sullen lips, long letters relating to 
the benighted condition of the inhabitants of Borrio- 
boola Gha, on the left bank of the Niger. And I listen, 
half e.Kpecting to hear poor, little neglected Peepy's 
head bumping down the stairs, while his absorbed 
mamma complacently continues her dictation, with a 
far-off look in her eyes, which tells that her thoughts are 



io8 Foreign Missions. 

with the poor heathen. And wretched Mr. Jellyby, who 
sits in the home, where waste, filth and disorder reign, 
with his head against the wall, opening his mouth from 
which no sound issues, meekly waiting for the half- 
drunken servant to bring in the ill-cooked, ill-served, 
miserable meal. " Foreign missions ! " Home mis- 
sions ! say I. Let our missionary, after looking well 
to the ways of his own household and successfully ac- 
complishing his mission there, stop over the sailing of 
a steamer in the great metropolis. Let him walk 
through its gas-lit streets between the hours of night- 
fall and midnight. Buy from that little, shrinking, 
trembling, shivering, half-clad boy the solitary paper 
he carries in his hand, and has with a pleading look in 
his dark eyes offered to a dozen passers-by. Then fol- 
low him home, if that name can be given to the room 
in the old tumble-down tenement house, reeking with 
filth and dampness. Shudder at the vile sights, and 
sounds and odors, that sicken you as you ascend flight 
after flight of rickety stairs. 

In a bed of straw covered with a few rags is a wo- 
man whose wasted form, and hectic cheek, and racking 
cough, tell that want and misery have done their 
work. Nestled close beside her are two little pinched 
faces, from which the soft beauty of childhood has 
been starved and frozen out. Listen to her story, it 
is very short. Her husband, an honest mechanic, was 



Foreign Missions. 109 

killed a year ago by a fall from a scaffolding ; they had 
lived comfortably before his death, she has worked 
since, while she could, but now she is dying, and oh ! 
the poor children, what is to become of them ? And 
a great agony looks out of the mother's eyes, for her 
children are dear to her as yours in their tender, help- 
less infancy were dear to you. Turn not away from 
her, I beseech you, comfort her, as you hope for com- 
fort in your dying hour, brighten the wretched room 
with fire, and light, and food, and brighten her heart 
with the promise that her children shall be cared for. 
There is no suffering like this in Borrio-boola-Gha, let 
its people go untaught yet a little longer. After mak- 
ing the poor woman comfortable for the night, with a 
promise to call on the morrow, follow your little guide 
down the shaky stairs again into the street. Sounds 
of drunken revelry, shouting, swearing, the cries of lit- 
tle children, and the shrill tones of women's voices 
shock your sensitive ears. Ah ! this is far worse than 
sailing away to some summer land where a pleasant 
cottage has been prepared for your reception and do- 
cile pupils are awaiting your arrival. 

The clock strikes ten ! You bid your little guide 
good-night as you see the lights on Broadway gleaming 
before you. Here you are met by women, young, mid- 
dle-aged, girls of fifteen, women of forty, painted, 
curled, bedizzened, bedraggled, they address you, 



no Live — To Exist. 

boldly, shamelessly. Well, suppose you stop a moment 
and speak kindly, seriously to one of them, she turns 
away with an oath ; to another, her answer is a mock- 
ing laugh that fiends might echo ; to a third, she bursts 
into a fit of weeping and sobs out a tale that the angels 
in Heaven would weep to hear. Ah ! there's nothing 
like this in Borrio-boola-Gha. 

Now go to your hotel, or, you are stopping at the 
pleasant home of your friend, the Secretary of the 
Board of Foreign Missions. My compliments to the 
Board, and tell them I am one of the Bored who be- 
lieve in the charity that begins at home. 



Live — To Exist. 



EMPHATICALLY to enjoy life; to be in a .state of 
happiness." Such is Webster's definition. How 
many live according to such conditions ? How many are 
in a state of happiness? Yet this is a dear old earth, in 
spite of all the fault that is found with her, that we 
spend our lives in, worrying, toiling, struggling for the 
means of existence. And though sometimes behind a 
cloud, the sun is still shining over our heads, the 
mountains call to us to come and gather strength, the 
brooks and birds sing to us, peaceful, sheltered valleys 
woo us to an ideal life of rest and love. But there is 



Live — To Exist. hi 

no time to pause and listen to the still, small voices 
that are calling to us. No time to seek out and ad- 
mire a glorious landscape that lifts our thoughts 
above all the petty cares of life, and Heaven itself 
seems opening to us. No time to spend a quiet day 
in the woods, imbibing through every sense the thou- 
sand delights that nature holds for those who love her. 
Unfortunate mortals ! We have none of us means 
quite sufficient for our wants, and we must still toil on. 

The fortune of the millionaire is but a mite com- 
pared to the fifteen millions of his friend, so he specu- 
lates in stocks, and the next week finds him a beggar, 
and then the toil begins again, or perchance his name 
is in the morning paper among the list of suicides. 
With some, life wears away in the weary labor for daily 
bread, while others spend sleepless nights- in cogitating 
the best investment for their millions. 

Thoreau built, with his own hands, a house, the 
actual cost of which was twenty-eight dollars ; his ex- 
penses two-thirds of a year, including his building, were 
sixty-two dollars, and there he lived alone two years, 
occasionally entertaining his friends and paying visits, 
happy and at peace with himself and the world. We 
cannot all follow Thoreau's example and live in the 
woods, in a house containing a single room, raise our own 
corn and beans, and bake our corn cakes in the ashes ; 
but restless, struggling, suffering, selfish beings that we 



112 Mother-in-Law. (The Other Side.) 

are, is there no way in which we can aid each other to 
live truer and happier Hves ? And in uprooting the 
weeds, and cutting away the brambles and briars that 
surround other lives, shall we not, while making an 
opening for the sun to shine upon their path, feel its 
vivifying rays upon our own heads. And at last, should 
the angel who appeared to Abou-Ben-Adhem, visit our 
couch, would it not be a happy thing to say " Write 
me as one who loves his fellow men "? 



Mother-in-Law. (The other side.) 



"So they have shirked and slighted me, and shifted me about, 
So tliey have well nigh soured me, and wore my old heart out." 

ITS only mother-in-law, so let her drudge and toil, 
taking the place of a servant without a servant's 
pay or privileges. Don't ask her to walk or to ride with 
you ; don't take her to concerts or lectures, she is too 
old to care for such things ; old people like a quiet life, 
and do not need change ; and then Bridget and Nora 
rnust have their evenings out, and just as likely as not it 
is the very time that you have tickets to the opera, so 
mother-in-law must sit with the children. Then there 
is darning and patching and knitting enough to keep 
her busy all day and every evening in the week. Then 
Tommy comes down with scarlet fever, and mother-in- 



Mother-in-Law. (The Other Side.) 113 

law must nurse him while mother keeps the other 
children away from contagion on the floor below. 
Baby cries with colic every night, and mother-in-law 
must take him in her room because she knows just 
how to soothe and quiet him. Or cook flies off" in a 
tangent some morning before the breakfast things are 
cleared away, and mother-in-law must supply her place 
for a few days. So often passes the life of the mother- 
in-law ; a few months or years with one, and then 
with another of her children ; often an unwelcome 
member of the family, spending the remnant of h'br life 
in unappreciated toil for those whose duty it should be 
to render her declining years comfortable and full of 
peace. Often a mere drudge in the family, tenderly 
nursing the sick, watching over the little ones with a 
patience -^and anxiety exceeding that of the parents ; 
knitting, darning, sewing ; alternately cook, seamstress 
or nursemaid, as circumstances may require. Thinking 
longingly, regretfully, sometimes with gathering tears of 
her own early married life, which does not seem so 
very long ago, when she was mistress of a happy home, 
when little children of her own clambered on her knee, 
when a strong arm was hers to lean upon, and a kind 
voice spoke words of love and encouragement. There 
are, undoubtedly, disagreeable, interfering, meddle- 
some mothers-in-law, who make home any thing but a 
paradise, but there is also the noble-hearted, unselfish 
8 



114 Human Fish. 

mother-in-law, who should be treated with considera- 
tion, and be made to feel that she is neither a burden 
nor a cipher in the household. There should be no 
shirking, no slighting, no shifting about. 



Human Fish. 



IF I believed in the transmigration of souls, I should 
feel altogether positive that some of the persons I 
meet in the world are simply codfish, metamorphosed, 
or, re-incarnated in a human body. 

No burst of enthusiasm is ever heard from the lips, 
no great emotion ever lights the eye or kindles the 
cheek of the human codfish ; devote heart, life and 
soul to one of them and you will find him, or her, as 
responsive to your ardor as the iron statue standing 
in your garden, embowered in fragrant blossoms, is ap- 
preciative of the beauty with which it is surrounded. 

Receive Dolphinia with open arms, give her your 
tenderest greeting, it will be met with two clammy fin- 
ger tips and the slight touch of a pair of bloodless 
lips. 

Out upon your apathetic, ichthy-rial natures, that are 
capable neither of appreciating the grand and glorious 
things in God's beautiful world, nor of understanding 



A Tale of the Tropics. 115 

and reciprocating the sweet and tender courtesies of 
friendship and love. 

Give me the heart that sends the blood bounding 
through the veins, that can love ahd hate, suffer and 
enjoy, leap with fiery indignation at a mean, despicable 
act, glow with a noble passion and become exalted 
with a sublime idea. 

Give me the April heart, like the April day with its 
storms and its sunshine, rather than the chill, sunless 
heart of November, that curdles the blood in the veins, 
and broods with its silent, leaden sky, like a pall over 
the spirit. 



A Tale of the Tropics. 



ORNING in the tropics ! The sun had just 



MORNING 
risen, an 



d the gorgeous and luxuriant foliage, 
still covered with a heavy dew, was glistening under its 
fervid rays as though a shower of diamonds. had fallen 
in the night ; the air was laden with the» perfume of 
blossoms and vocal with the melody of bright-plumed 

birds. The streets of the ancient town of P were 

beginning to show signs of life and activity ; the water 
carrier astride his mule was riding at a lazy pace, stop- 
ping occasionally to supply his customers with water 
fresh from the mountain streams. Gaily turbaned ne- 



ii6 A Tale of the Tropics. 

gresscs, with their light muslin skirts trailing in the 
dust, and carrying on their heads piles of snowy gar- 
ments from the laundry, baskets of luscious bananas, 
pines, oranges and other delicious fruits, showed their 
white teeth in a broad smile as they bade each other a 
friendly " buena dios." 

The inmates of the casa of Don Henrico Alvarez 
appeared to be still wrapped in slumber. No sound 
was heard save the chatter of a parrot, hanging in his 
gilded cage on the vine-covered balcony, and the rustle 
of the palm tree stirred by the gentle breeze from the 
ocean. But there was reason for the unusu.il silence at 
this hour in the morning, late for even a tropical house- 
hold to be slumbering. A grand ball had been given 
the night before, at which every old and wealthy fam- 
ily of the town had been represented, and ere the last 
guest had departed, and the last strain of music had 
floated away on the perfumed air, the southern cross 
had paled before the beams of the rising sun ; an at- 
mosphere of peaceful repose seemed to reign through- 
out the hoifse. All slept save one. The queenly 
daughter of Alvarez, to celebrate whose birth - right 
this magnificent fete had been given, paced her room 
with restless feet, still wearing the robe of pearly silk 
with its trimmings of costly lace, and rare diamonds, 
the gift of her father to this petted daughter and only 
scion of his house, her luxuriant black hair wound in 



A Tale of the Tropics. 117 

many a shining coil around the beautiful head with its 
single ornament of a gorgeous scarlet passion flower, 
fit emblem of the heart so wildly throbbing beneath 
the silken waist. This regal beauty with the form and 
face of a peri and a heart of fire, in which love burned, 
with so intense a flame that it needed but a breath of 
jealousy to fan it into the consuming blaze of a deadly 
hate. This proud, petted, undisciplined creature was 
suffering from the pangs of a wounded and slighted 
love, A fair, slender girl, with eyes as azure as the 
skies of her native clime, and waving hair that shone 
as though sunbeams were gathered in its golden meshes, 
was winning from her a heart that was dearer to her 
than all the treasures of her father's wealth, and with- 
out which the lowest servant in his house would be an 
object of envy. This fair northerner, accompanied by 
a brother, had forsaken the pleasures of sleigh rides, 
parties and operas at home, to enjoy a few months of 
the indolent and voluptuous life of the tropics, ostens- 
ibly for the improvement of her health, but, possibly, 
as some of her rivals and one or two rejected lovers, 
who had been caught in the golden meshes of her 
hair, affirmed, to renew the acquaintance formed the 
previous summer at a watering place, with a rich and 
handsome young southerner. Whatever the object, 
the result seemed entirely satisfactory, and evening 
after evening saw Don Manuel at her side, although 



ii8 A Tale of the Tropics. 

she well knew that he had been a year betrothed to 
the beautiful girl who watched her when they met with 
gleaming eyes, acknowledging her smiling recognition 
with a frigid and scornful hauteur. 

The calmest nature suffers intolerable pangs from 
slighted affection; what, then, must be the agony of a 
heart like this ? The tortures of a lost soul could 
scarce be greater, and yet this girl, with the coldly glit- 
tering eyes, saw, with the insight of woman, and re- 
joiced at the misery she was inflicting, and every art 
of a beautiful and unscrupulous woman was used to 
weave a spell around the rich and fascinating south- 
erner. 

Night has again dropped her curtain over the broad 
Pacific ; dark-eyed senoritas accompanied by gallant- 
looking senors and officers from the ships lying in the 
harbor are promenading on the ramparts ; sounds of 
revelry are floating upon the air, for in the evening com- 
mences the life and enjoyment of the tropics. 

In the home of one of the wealthy old Spanish fam- 
ilies were congregated all the beauty and fashion of 
the town. Sitting a little apart from the gay crowd 
were Senor Manuel and the fair Inez, engrossed in an 
interesting conversation. But what guest is announced 
who draws every eye and hushes every voice ? Juanita 
Alvarez enters upon the arm of her father, a vision of 
loveliness that seems to be more of heaven than of 



A Tale of the Tropics. 119 

earth, dressed in a robe of filmy lace, looped here and 
therewith fragrant orange blossoms, magnificent pearls 
encircling neck and arms and wound in the glossy 
braids of her raven hair, her face as white as the blos- 
soms on her dress, and her great dark eyes luminous 
with an unearthly light. As she enters the room with 
the air of a queen, each beautiful woman feels herself 
pale into an insignificant star in presence of the glori- 
ous moon. Rut let us go back a few hours and look at 
the bowed head, the face convulsed with the agony of 
mortified pride and wounded love. Shall this daugh- 
ter of a noble house who has rejected lovers by the 
score for this one false and fickle heart, live to feel the 
pity of friends and the scorn of the rival whose heart 
is as cold as the snows of her native land ? Never ! 
to-night shall be a triumph — her last one ! Her faithful 
maid wonders at the unusual care her mistress is giving 
to her toilet, and when all is complete pronounces her 
" as lovely as an angel." But one thing more ; from a 
little cabinet she takes a small phial containing a white 
powder, and with one last agonized glance upon the 
beautiful reflection in the mirror, drops the contents 
into a glass of wine and drinks to the last drop. Then 
calmly she descends to meet the fond old father, who 
will never more take pride or pleasure in his beautiful 
daughter. 

The band is playing Beethoven's Dream Waltz ; the 



I20 A Tale of the Tropics. 

hand of the beautiful Juanita has been eagerly sought 
in every dance, and now Senor Manuel has come to 
chaim her as a partner. * ' * * 

How beautiful she is to-night ! What a strange, un- 
earthly light glows from her dark eyes ! The glitter- 
ing blue ones that follow her with their cold and cruel 
glare look pale and faded in contrast. The fickle lover 
wonders that his thoughts could for a moment have 
strayed from so lovely a being. Floating, floating to 
the soft strains of the heavenly music, all eyes are 
ga/.ing upon her. Can it indeed be a being of earth, 
or is it a peri strayed from paradise ? The music 
ceases ; the flying feet are motionless ; the head is 
drooping heavily upon Don Manuel's shoulder; she has 
swooned ; a crowd gather around. No ! the subtle 
poison has done its fatal work ; death has claimed the 
glorious beauty as //is bride. Ah ! Don Manuel ! too 
late come the frenzied kisses upon the cold lips ; the 
passionate heart is at rest ; its wild throbbing has 
ceased forever. 

The lady Inez returned to her home ere the snows 
had quite melted from its hills and vales ; her cold 
* beauty is waning now, and she is still unmarried. A 
tale of the evil she had wrought followed her, wafted 
upon the southern breeze, and suitors gradually 
dropped off. 

The fascinating Don Manuel may be occasionally 



Night Thoughts. 121 

seen in the streets of P , a grey haired man in the 

habit of a monk. The broken-hearted old father rests 
by the side of his darHng child ; the walls of the house 
of Alvarez are still standing, covered with a drapery of 
luxuriant vines and moss, and every night at the witch- 
ing hour of twelve, so the tale runs, there glides 
through its deserted gardens the white-robed figure of 
a young and beautiful woman. 



Night Thoughts. 



NOT more weird are the " Poppy Visions of Ca- 
thay " than those which drive sleep from my 
pillow. Strange thoughts of Life and Death, of 
Heaven and Eternity. Of peaceful, happy nights, 
when "Safe our quiet Eden lay." Of moonlit, star- 
lit, heaven-born nights, when shadow of trees fell 
across the dewy lawn, and blossoms exhaled their fra- 
grance, and insects chirped softly, while within life 
was set to music. Soft breathings of healthful, rosy 
children. Quiet, tranquil slumber for the elders, with 
bright smiles, glad greetings, frolic and play when the 
sun comes creeping over the hills. Again, sick-bed 
watchings, hours of anxiety when the night lamp is 
shaded from weary eyes, and the light of a young life 
is burning low. A pale, pinched face on the pillow. 



122 Night Thoughts. 

that a few nights since was warm and sweet in its 
frame of soft brown hair. Wringing of hands and 
hurried prayers, so fraught with agonized entreaty, it 
seems that Heaven and earth must move to answer. 

Death-bed scenes when the Hfe we would gladly 
give our own to save is gliding away from us, and we 
sit dumb and powerless, and then again strive franti- 
cally to ward off the Destroyer. 

Nights of tearless, sleepless agony, when we sit listen- 
ing to the same sounds, looking on the same scene, which 
only mocks us with its unchanged beauty, for we know 
the soft summer wind is stirring the grass over a grave 
where rests the form that once lay wrapt in happy 
dreams, in the little bed that stands vacant beside our 
own. Heaven is far away from us. Darkness deeper 
than the night is brooding over us. 

Troubles thicken. Quiet heart-rest comes no more. 
The nights pass away with sudden wakings, and una- 
vailing effort to drive thought away. 

The clock strikes three ! The darkest hour which 
comes before the dawn ! Oh, despairing doubting soul ! 
take courage ; trust in God's providence ; even now 
the light is faintly streaking the eastern sky, the night 
is passing into oblivion. 



Life's Contrasts. 123 



Life's Contrasts. 



YESTERDAY in the whirl and bustle of the great 
metropolis, threading my way through its close 
and crowded business streets, up steep flights of stairs, 
into offices and sanctums wherein sat perspiring pub- 
lishers, editors, designers, engravers, hot and busy, po- 
lite but hurried. 

In the streets heat and noise, vile sights and sounds 
and odors, one does not wonder that children droop 
and die; that men commit murder and suicide; that 
women turn aside from the path of rectitude to keep 
soul and body together. 

Great, restless, throbbing city ! gladly 1 shake your 
dust from my feet and step on the cars that whirl me 
past river and hill, mountain and meadow, villa and 
farm-house, till I reach that " dearest spot on earth 
to me — home, sweet home." 

To day in the pure free air of the country, 

" Life's burdens fall, its discords cease, 
I lapse into the glad release 
Of nature's own exceeding peace." 

Driving with a party of friends to the Shakers at 
Niskayuna, up the long ascent with views of hills and 
river and city behind us, and glimpses of the blue tops 



124 Life's Contrasts. 

of the Catpkills and Helderbergs to the south, out on 
the long level stretch of road, shaded by drooping elms 
and willows; birds singing in the branches and sunbeams 
shimmering through, over ferns, wild lupins, and daisies. 
Here hangs the dainty nest of the oriole gently swaying 
in the summer breeze, there scampers a light-footed 
squirrel almost under our horse's feet and up the nearest 
tree to peer out at us from the safe shelter of his leafy 
retreat. Now we pass through the dense shade of the 
fragrant pine grove and out by the lake where the pond 
lilies grow, and alight in the quiet, neat, orderly pre- 
cincts of Shakerdom. Entering the house of worship, 
with its spotless walls and polished floors and benches, 
we are shown seats and listen to a brief discourse by ona 
of the brethren followed by singing and the dance or 
promenade peculiar to the Shaker form of worship. 

Earnest and devout, affecting one to tears rather 
than to laughter. Here are old men and women who 
have never known the joys, nor the sorrows, the anxie- 
ties, nor the sweet delights of family ties, whose faces 
show a perfect serenity and contentment. Occasion- 
ally, as the procession moves round and round, we no- 
tice a stolid faced man, one whose bodily wants are 
supplied which is to him the ultimate of life. 

Young girls who look pure as the angels, in their 
white gowns and caps, join in the dance. Here comes 
a man in citizens dress, evidently a recent arrival. 



From Under my Awning. 125 

whose face bears the traces of care, weariness and dis- 
appointment. Life to him has proved a faiku'e, I 
sliould say, and he has come to seek rest. Here is a 
dear httle girl, unHke the others, in bkie dress and 
white collar, and her long fair curls have as yet been 
spared, she has a happy face and will grow up pure 
and unsullied ; better, far better, in this peaceful shel- 
ter, away from the snares and temptations of the 
world, than in one of those wretched tenement houses 
in the great city where misery and vice join hands. 

And now adieu dear Shaker friends, we admire, but 
do not envy you, for we think 'tis 

" Better to have loved and lost, 
Than never to have loved." 



From Under my A-wning. 



w 



'HEN the fates condemn one to spend the sum- 
mer months where the " song of brooks and 
birds," the glory of sunrise and sunset, the "airs out- 
blown from ferny dells, and clover bloom, and sweet- 
briar smells," can be enjoyed only in retrospection, the 
next best thing is to shut down the gates (metaphori- 
cally speaking) of one's longings and aspirations, and 
if a briny drop comes filtering through occasionally, 
after reading a letter from mountain or sea-shore, mop 



126 From Under my Awning. 

it up, give the gates another push, look out the win- 
dow, and learn how much one can see in a very lim- 
ited space that is interesting, amusing, and pathetic. 
Sit here in the rocker by the work table; don't look at 
the confused heap of waists minus a button, kneeless 
pants, and toeless stockings, they try the eyes and the 
patience sometimes, but it will be any thing but a 
happy day when the work table is in prim order and 
there's no more patching to be done. 

Now peep through the geraniums and see what you 
will see. Elms waving lightly in the breeze, an empty 
robin's nest in one, which the sparrows have appro- 
priated, and are re-fitting with wisps of hay, in the 
neatest and most approved style of nest building. 
Across the street a little barefoot waif with scant and 
torn dress, a handkerchief pinned over her yellow hair, 
and a wistful look sad to see in the face of a child, is 
sitting on the steps arranging bunches of wintergreens 
in a basket. A barefoot boy with a loaf of bread un- 
der his arm steals behind her and silently watches her, 
his fingers creep slyly through the rails, and we hope 
he is not going to pilfer a bunch. No, he thinks bet- 
ter of it, and we recall something about a good angel 
over one shoulder, and a bad one over the other, etc. 
The good one evidently gets the best of it, and he the 
boy, not the angel) sits down and helps her, then buys 
a penny bunch and marches off. A really more gen- 



From Under my Awning. 127 

erous act than ours in calling her over and investing a 
bright five cent piece in five tiny bunches, for what 
boy, barefoot or well shod, would not rather invest 
money in candy or peanuts than in wintergreens. 

" Barefoot boy with cheek of tan, 
Blessings on thee little man." 

Next comes a vender of soap, " three cakes for 
twenty-five cents or one for ten." We don't want 
any, but " the times are so hard and a family to sup- 
port." Well, we invest twenty-five cents. Next a 
tramping of small feet, and a troop of youngsters com- 
ing up the street. Hurrah ! it's vacation. School out 
at eleven and nothing but play till September ; and in 
less time than it takes to write it the school clothes are 
exchanged for the play clothes, and the front steps are 
a rendezvous for all the boys within a dozen blocks. 
Those unfortunates in the vicinity who never had any 
children, and who have forgotten that there was ever 
such a period in their own lives, involuntarily wish 
that a hurricane might suddenly arise and blow them 
all in a bee line into the river, or that a tidal wave 
might wash up and sweep them all off in a promiscu- 
ous heap. Ah ! but it's a good thing to live one's life, 
to let God's air and sunshine into the house, to open 
heart and home to the children, to give kind words to 
the young, the aged, the unfortunate, if we can give 
nothing else. Rap at the basement door, and up 



128 From Under my Awning. 

comes Nora with two nice gingham aprons, so cheap, 
and the girl's mother sick at home. Ah, dear ! do the 
wretched all come to our door ? We take one, and 
sigh as we look at the collapsed condition of our port- 
monnaie and wonder whether we shall end our days in 
that large wliite building a little further up the hill. 

Now let us go down to lunch and after *' snatching a 
hasty morsel of refreshment," perhaps also snatching 
a hasty nap on the lounge while the children are in 
the garden playing circus, we shall feel in blither mood 
to sit down to our afternoon's mending and take a 
peep now and then from under the awning. Now be- 
gins the tide of travel to the park, young men and 
maidens tapping a lively tattoo on the walk with their 
croquet mallets, fathers and mothers trundling baby 
carriages, and little trots pattering along beside them. 
Wealth and ease leaning comfortably back in car- 
riages, equestrians of both sexes clattering gaily along 
and those who earn the bread by the sweat of the 
brow walking a little wearily up the hill with wife and 
children, to listen to the concert free to rich and poor, 
and inhale the fresh air alike free to all. So on they 
go, pretty faces, homely faces, cross faces, pleasant 
faces (and oh ! we wish some of the mother's faces 
might wear a sweeter expression. It's sad to see the 
little ones so often pulled and jerked and scolded, and 
the bright little faces shadowed for some merry antic 



An Ungallant Ghost. 129 

that is just as natural as the frolic of a kitten), pretty 
dresses gracefully looped and horrid dresses with pan- 
niers zvobbling (shade of Webster pardon us) about in 
the most ridiculous manner. And now our eyes ache 
with looking at the tide of human faces and our ears 
with listening to the tramp of restless feet, we raise the 
awning and leave the flowers to bask in the glory of 
the setting sun. 



An Ungallant Ghost. 



The children were playing in the nursery. They 
had converted the lounge into an express wagon, piled 
it with every thing available they could lay their mis- 
chievous hands upon, harnessed two chairs together 
and were driving with a noise and clatter that ap- 
peared to afford them much satisfaction, and make up 
in a measure for the lack of speed in their somewhat 
stiff-legged team. Mamma had just taken the last 
stitch in a suit of clothes for the youngest of the bois- 
terous trio, who had reached the mature age of five, 
and who had watched their progress from cutting out 
to the sewing on of the last button, and in a twinkling 
" Baby " is strutting about in all the dignity of his first 
pants. 

A thawing, drizzly, cheerless day, the children grow 
9 



130 An Ungallant Ghost. 

more boisterous, mamma opens her mouth and after 
the manner of Mr. Jellyby, closes it again without an 
audible sound. " Let them be happy while they may," 
she says, mentally, and looks out upon the dreary pros- 
pect with a sigh. The yearly coal bill has just been 
presented, the school bill lies in the work-table drawer, 
other bills will soon fall due, the children need shoes 
and the dozen things a family of children are always 
needing ; furniture needs repairing, paint needs re- 
touching, the once handsome house begins to have a 
shabby look that all the little arts of feminine handi- 
craft fail to hide. 

Mamma calculates her income for the hundredth 
time in the last twenty-four hours, and for the hun- 
dredth time says, mentally, again, " Where is the 
money coming from?" Spirits neither of the earth 
nor air vouchsafe an answer. She breathes a sort of 
prayer, half to the Being who shapes our destinies, 
and half to one who has passed to that land whence 
none return. The prayer is a very despairing one, 
with little faith that it will be answered, for a hardness, 
a doubt in a merciful and beneficent Providence is 
stealing into her heart as she thinks of friends and ac- 
quaintances treading the sheltered and sun-lit paths of 
life, while the storm has burst upon her with sudden 
and bewildering fury. It is growing dusk. " Mamma, 
shall I tell Katey to get tea? I'm awful hungry," 



An Ungallant Ghost. 131 

shouts irrepressible Johnnie. Permission is given, and 
the good-natured maid soon shows her broad face in 
the door and announces, " Tay is ready, mum." Tlie 
table is neatly laid, fire and lamp burn brightly, and 
the look of cosy comfort is in pleasant contrast with 
the gloom outside, and while the family are enjoying 
the cup that cheers, we will take a peep at their sur- 
roundings. The house is an old-time mansion, but 
having been thoroughly rejuvenated by its late owner, 
shows little trace of the lapse of years since its sub- 
stantial brick walls were laid. Some trim villas and cot- 
tages have sprung up around it since horse and steam 
cars have brought it within easy access of the town, 
yet the old house, with its traditionary lore, still stands 
a well-preserved and stately relic of the olden time. 

Many are the weird legends that have formed the 
subject of a winter night's tale among the ignorant and 
superstitious in the neighborhood ; for this house 
" wherein men have lived and died," has for long years 
been styled " The Haunted House." One tale is of a 
murdered heiress, and buried gold which still awaits 
the fortunate finder that shall bring it to the light of 
day. Another is of the sudden disappearance of a 
young heir, whose bones are supposed to be lyino- 
without Christian burial where the sunshine and the 
dews of heaven never penetrate. 

Its present occupants possibly have laid the ghost. 



132 An Ungallant Ghost. 

as neither " black spirits nor white, red spirits nor 
gray," have appeared to any member of the family. 
Twice have visitants of flesh and blood entered, not 
" at the open door," after the fashion of people of 
their ilk, preferring to make an entrance through the 
window, and taking all the accessible valuables departed 
as informally as they came. Twice has the heroic 
mistress of the mansion, at the witching hour 
" when grave yards yawn," firing at imaginary house- 
breakers, left the traces of her valor in the walls. 

But we left our friends at the tea-table ; afterward 
came the lessons and putting the children to bed, then 
when all was quiet, drawing her arm chair in front of 
the fire, the mother falls to meditating again, Katey 
sings while she irons in the kitchen below, the wind 
sighs and moans, or shrieks and whistles outside, the 
blinds rattle, the trees groan and bend their naked 
branches in the blast, the rain is beating against the 
windows. Hark ! What sound is that ? A rustling 
of garments beside the lonely figure in the ciiair causes 
her heart to throb with a sudden terror and her limbs 
seem paralyzed. Do the spirits of the dead indeed 
walk the earth, or does this " strange phantom come 
from over-thought ? " A majestic form stands beside 
her, " Follow me," is uttered in a low but distinct 
tone, and pale and trembling she follows the lead of her 
ghostly visitor. Down the broad staircase, through the 



An Ungallant Ghost. 133 

wide, silent hall, down another flight of stairs into a 
corner of one of the great cellars leads the ghost and fol- 
lows the trembling woman. A shovel stands near. "Dig!" 
is the next command ; surely an ungallant ghost ! but 
without a protest she takes the shovel and sets about her 
unwonted* task. Little progress is made. After what 
seems an hour of hard labor, she pauses breathless and 
panting in her task; again the word " dig! " in a se- 
pulchral whisper. With her last remnant of strength 
she toils on ; deep and deeper grows the cavity, her 
arms and back are aching intolerably, she . can scarce 
raise the shovel, but at last — a box — the lid flies off 
and Gold ! Gold ! bright, dazzling, unmistakable gold 
meets her bewildered gaze. Can it be, can it indeed 
be possible that it is all her own ? She lifts her eyes 
to her supernatural visitor — he has vanished. Alas ! 
the gold has vanished, too. She is sitting in her arm 
chair, great drops of perspiration on her brow and 
numb with cold, for the fire is burning low. Katey 
still sings and irons in the kitchen, the rain still beats 
against the panes, the wind still moans and rattles 
at the casements, and still the query remains un- 
answered " Where is the money coming from? " 



134 Good-bye to the Old Year. 



Good-bye to the Old Year. 



J " Of all sad words of tongue or pen, 

The maddest are these : ' It might have been.' " . 

writes one of our noblest poets : yet another, equally 
sad, often spoken by the lips, oftener, perhaps, inaudi- 
ble to mortal ears, down in the depths of the heart, is 
that little word " Good-bye." Often lightly spoken by 
friends who part for a day, a week, a month, perhaps a 
year — pleasure, business, travel, change of scene fill 
up the interval. Even the year so long in anticipation, 
glides swiftly past, and again hands are clasped in glad 
greeting. 

Again, sad, solemn, is the " good-bye " which is said 
for the last time on earth, when one " weary of labor 
and welcoming sleep " is passing away to that land so 
near and yet so far. Life's work is done, and the long 
retrospect of years show a fair record of an honest, up- 
right, generous, well-ordered life. Friends stand around 
with the solemn mien which the dignity of death in- 
spires ; grown up children shed quiet tears ; there is no 
frantic grief for the life that goes out at three score 
and ten. The good-bye is said, the eyes close for the 
last time on earthly scenes, and a sad and mournful 
feeling pervades us for the loss of the good man gone 



Good-bye to the Old Year. 135 

from among us. There is one less to cherish here, one 
more to meet us " there." 

A dying mother feebly clasps her little ones for the 
last time to her bosom. Oh that dreadful " last time ! " 
Who will love them, who will watch over them as she 
has done ! Who will soothe their sorrows and rejoice 
in their joys? Who will make smooth and pleasant the 
rough path to their tender feet ? Where will the 
little sunny heads nestle when weary and sick ? Alas ! 
the loving heart grows chill. " Good-bye — good-bye, 
my darlings," comes faintly from dying lips. Sobs, 
tears and groans fill the death chamber. No sadder 
good-bye is ever uttered. 

A young grief-stricken wife sits by the bedside of 
her husband. " Ah, dearest, who will love, who will 
cherish you when I am gone ? Who can shield you 
from the jostle of the rude world so well as I ? If I 
could but live for your sake ! " The words are scarcely 
spoken ere the death angel stands between them. 
Good-bye, good-bye ; I shall await you there." One 
is wafted across the shining river, the other turns wear- 
ily to take up life's burdens. 

Good-bye to hope, when every vessel that we have 
launched upon the sunlit waves is cast up a dismantled 
wreck upon a barren rock-bound coast. 

Good-bye to youth, which passes as quickly as a 
bright, rose-scented morning in June. 



136 Good-bye to the Old Year. 

Good-bye to love, to the fickle hearts we have en- 
shrined within our own ; clung to despairingly ; tried 
to believe in till doubt gives place to certainty. Then 
comes the unspoken " good-bye," and henceforth this 
world is " but a poor half world that swings uneasy on its 
axis, and makes us dizzy with the clatter of its wreck." 

There's been many a sad good-bye in the twelve 
months that are past, yet let us bury our perished 
hopes and joys and loves out of sight in the grave of 
the dead year, and go forth to meet the new year that 
is dawning, sadder, yet wiser, remembering that the 
baptism of sorrow purifies and strengthens the soul. 

Good-bye, Old Year ! Past is your springtime, with 
budding trees, springing grasses, sunshine and show- 
ers ; past your summer days with their fervid heat, 
their blossoms, and their splendor of gold and purple ; 
past your autumn with its garnered grains, its gathered 
fruits, its faded grass and fallen leaves. And now, with 
the first keen breath of the Frost Spirit on your brow, 
you are passing away. 

Good-bye, Old Year. 

Rich gift of God 1 A year of time ! 

What pomp of rise and shut of day, 
Wiiat lilies wherewith our northern clime 

Makes autumn's dropping woodlands gay. 
What airs outblown from ferny dells, 
And clover bloom and sweet-brier smells, 
What songs of brooks and birds, what fruits and flowers. 
Green woods and moonlit snows have in its round been ours ! 



